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CAN GRANDE'S CASTLE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



CAN GRANDE'S CASTLE 



BY 

AMY LOWELL "^ 

Author of 

"Sword Blades and Poppy Seed," 

" Men, Women, and Ghosts," 

"Tendencies in Modern American Poetry," Etc. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1918 

All rights reserved 



Copyright, 1917, by The North American Review 

and by The Seven Arts 
Copyright, 1918, by The North American Review 






Copyright, 1918 

Bt the macmillan company 



Notinooti ^rcsB 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Maas., U.S.A. 

SEP 25 bi« 
©CI.A503531 



'V r *>* 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Sea-Blue and Blood-Red 1 

Guns as Keys: and the Great Gate Swings . 47 

Hedge Island 99 

The Bronze Horses 121 



Thanks are due to the editor of The Korlh American Review for 
permission to reprint " Sea-Bhie and Blood-Red " and " Hedge Island," 
and to the editor of T/ie Seven Arts for a like permission in regard to 
" Guns as Keys : and the Great Gate Swings." 



7 turn the page and read . . . 

The heavy musty air, the black desks. 
The bent heads and the rustling noises 
In the great dome 
Vanish . . . 
And 

The sun hangs in the cobalt-blue sky. 
The boat drifts over the lake shallows. 

The fishes skim, like umber shades through the undulating tceeds, 
The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns. 
And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle 
About the cleft battlements of Can Grande's castle ..." 
Richard Aldington. " At the British Museum." 



PREFACE 

The four poems in this book are more closely 
related to one another than may at first appear. 
They all owe their existence to the war, for I 
suppose that, had there been no war, I should 
never have thought of them. They are scarcely 
war poems, in the strict sense of the word, nor 
are they allegories in which the present is made 
to masquerade as the past. Rather, they are 
the result of a vision thrown suddenly back upon 
remote events to explain a strange and terrible 
reality. "Explain" is hardly the word, for to 
explain the subtle causes which force men, once 
in so often, to attempt to break the civilization 
they have been at pains to rear, and so oblige 
other, saner, men to oppose them, is scarcely the 
province of poetry. Poetry works more devi- 
ously, but perhaps not less conclusively. 



VUl PREFACE 

It has frequently been asserted that an 
artist Uves apart, that he must withdraw him- 
self from events and be somehow above and 
beyond them. To a certain degree this is 
true, as withdrawal is usually an inherent 
quality of his nature, but to seek such a with- 
drawal is both ridiculous and frustrating. For 
an artist to shut himself up in the proverbial 
"ivory tower" and never look out of the win- 
dow is merely a tacit admission that it is his 
ancestors, not he, who possess the faculty of 
creation. This is the real decadence : to see 
through the eyes of dead men. Yet to-day 
can never be adequately expressed, largely 
because we are a part of it and only a part. 
For that reason one is flung backwards to a 
time which is not thrown out of proportion 
by any personal experience, and which on 
that very account lies extended in something 
like its proper perspective. 

Circumstances beget an interest in like cir- 



PBEFACE IX 

cumstances, and a poet, suddenly finding 
himself in the midst of war, turns naturally 
to the experiences of other men in other wars. 
He discovers something which has always 
hitherto struck him as preposterous, that life 
goes on in spite of war. That war itself is 
an expression of life, a barbaric expression on 
one side calling for an heroic expression on 
the other. It is as if a door in his brain 
crashed open and he looked into a distance 
of which he had heard but never before seen. 
History has become life, and he stands aghast 
and exhilarated before it. 

That is why I have chosen Mr. Aldington's 
poem as a motto to this book. For it is ob- 
vious that I cannot have experienced what 
I have here written. I must have got it from 
books. But, living now, in the midst of events 
greater than these, the books have become 
reality to me in a way that they never could 
have become before, and the stories I have 



dug out of dusty volumes seem as actual as 
my own existence. I hope that a httle of 
this vividness may have got into the poems 
themselves, and so may reach my readers. 
Perhaps it has been an impossible task, I can 
only say that I was compelled to attempt it. 

The poems are written in "polyphonic 
prose," a form which has proved a stumbling- 
block to many people. "Polyphonic prose" is 
perhaps a misleading title, as it tends to make 
the layman think that this is a prose form. 
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The 
word "prose" in its title simply refers to the 
manner in which the words are printed; "poly- 
phonic" — many- voiced — giving the real key. 
"Polyphonic prose" is the freest, the most 
elastic, of all forms, for it follows at will any, 
and all, of the rules which guide other forms. 
Metrical verse has one set of laws, cadenced 
verse another; "polyphonic prose" can go 
from one to the other in the same poem with 



PREFACE xi 

no sense of incongruity. Its only touchstone 
is the taste and feehng of its author. 

Yet, hke all other artistic forms, it has cer- 
tain fundamental principles, and the chief of 
these is an insistence on the absolute adequacy 
of the manner of a passage to the thought it 
embodies. Taste is therefore its determining 
factor; taste and a rhythmic ear. 

In the preface to "Sword Blades and Poppy r 
Seed," I stated that I had found the idea of 
the form in the works of the French poet, 
M. Paul Fort. But in adapting it for use 
in English I was obliged to make so many 
changes that it may now be considered as 
practically a new form. The greatest of these 
changes was in the matter of rhythm. M. 
Fort's practice consists, almost entirely, of 
regular verse passages interspersed with regu- 
lar prose passages. But a hint in one of his 
poems led me to believe that a closer blend- 
ing of the two types was desirable, and here 



XU PREFACE 

at the very outset I met with a difficulty. 
Every form of art must have a base; to de- 
part satisfactorily from a rhythm it is first 
necessary to have it. M. Fort found this 
basic rhythm in the alexandrine. But the 
rhythm of the alexandrine is not one of the 
basic rhythms to an English ear. Altered 
from syllables to accent, it becomes light, 
even frivolous, in texture. There appeared 
to be only one basic rhythm for English 
serious verse : iambic pentameter, which, 
either rhymed as in the "heroic couplet" or un- 
rhymed as in "blank verse," seems the chief 
foundation of English metre. It is so heavy 
and so marked, however, that it is a difficult 
rhythm to depart from and go back to ; there- 
fore I at once discarded it for my purpose. 

Putting aside one rhythm of English prosody 
after another, I finally decided to base my 
form upon the long, flowing cadence of ora- 
torical prose. The variations permitted to 



PREFACE xiii 

this cadence enable the poet to change the 
more readily into those of vers libre, or even 
to take the regular beat of metre, should such 
a marked time seem advisable. It is, of course, 
important that such changes should appear as 
not only adequate but necessary when the 
poem is read aloud. And so I have found it. 
However puzzled a reader may be in trying 
to apprehend with the eye a prose which is cer- 
tainly not prose, I have never noticed that an 
audience experiences the slightest confusion in 
hearing a "polyphonic prose" poem read aloud. 
I admit that the typographical arrangement of 
this form is far from perfect, but I have not as 
yet been able to hit upon a better. As all 
printing is a mere matter of convention, how- 
ever, I hope that people will soon learn to 
read it with no more difficulty than a musician 
knows in reading a musical score. 

So much for the vexed question of rhythm. 
Others of the many voices of "polyphonic 



XIV PREFACE 

prose" are rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and 
return. Rhyme is employed to give a richness 
of effect, to heighten the musical feeling of a 
passage, but it is employed in a different way 
from that usual in metrical verse. For, al- 
though the poet may, indeed must, employ 
rhyme, it is not done always, nor, for the most 
part, regularly. In other words, the rhymes 
should seldom come at the ends of the ca- 
dences, unless such an effect be especially 
desired. This use of rhyme has been another 
difficulty to readers. Seeing rhymes, their 
minds have been compelled by their seeming 
strangeness to pull them, Jack-Horner-like, 
out of the text and unduly notice them, to 
the detriment of the passage in which they 
are embedded. Hearing them read without 
stress, they pass unobserved, merely adding 
their quota of tonal colour to the whole. 

Return in "polyphonic prose" is usually 
achieved by the recurrence of a dominant 



PREFACE XV 

thought or image, coming in irregularly and 
in varying words, but still giving the spherical 
effect which I have frequently spoken of as 
imperative in all poetry. 

^ It will be seen, therefore, that "polyphonic 
prose" is, in a sense, an orchestral form. Its 
tone is not merely single and melodic as is 
that of vers libre, for instance, but contra- 
puntal and variousy I have analyzed it here 
with some care because, as all the poems in 
this volume are written in it, some knowledge 
of how to approach it is necessary if one is 
to understand them. I trust, however, that 
my readers wiU speedily forget matters of 
technique on turning to the poems themselves. 
One thing more I wish to say in regard to 
"Guns as Keys: and the Great Gate Swings." 
I should be exceedingly sorry if any part of 
this poem were misunderstood, and so con- 
strued into an expression of discourtesy toward 
Japan. No such idea entered my mind in 



Xvi PREFACE 

writing it; in fact, the Japanese sections in 
the first part were intended to convey quite 
the opposite meaning. I wanted to place in 
juxtaposition the dehcacy and artistic clarity 
of Japan and the artistic ignorance and gallant 
self-confidence of America. Of course, each 
country must be supposed to have the faults of 
its virtues ; if, therefore, I have also opposed 
Oriental craft to Occidental bluff, I must beg 
indulgence. 

I have tried to give a picture of two races at 
a moment when they were brought in contact 
for the first time. Which of them has gained 
most by this meeting, it would be difficult to 
say. The two episodes in the "Postlude" are 
facts, but they can hardly epitomize the whole 
truth. Still they are striking, occurring as 
they did in the same year. I owe the scene 
of the drowning of the young student in the 
Kegon waterfall to the paper "Young Japan," 
by Seichi Naruse, which appeared in the 



PBEFACE XVll 

"Seven Arts" for April, 1917, The inscrip- 
tion on the tree I have copied word for word 
from Mr. Naruse's translation, and I wish 
here to express my thanks, not for his per- 
mission (as with a perfect disregard of morals, 
I never asked it), but for his beautiful render- 
ing of the original Japanese. I trust that my 
appreciation will exonerate my theft. 

Amy Lowell. 

Brookline, Mass. 
Mat 24, 1918. 



SEA-BLUE AND BLOOD-RED 



SEA-BLUE AND BLOOD-RED 

I 

The Mediterranean 

Blue as the tip of a salvia blossom, the inverted 
cup of the sky arches over the sea. Up to meet it, 
in a flat band of glaring colour, rises the water. The 
sky is unspecked by clouds, but the sea is flecked 
with pink and white light shadows, and silver scintil- 
lations snip-snap over the tops of the waves. 

Something moves along the horizon. A puff of 
wind blowing up the edges of the silver-blue sky? 
Clouds ! Clouds ! Great thimderheads marching 
along the skyline ! No, by Jove ! The sun shining 
on sails ! Vessels, hull down, with only their tiers 
of canvas showing. Beautiful ballooning thunder- 
heads dipping one after another below the blue 
band of the sea. 



4 CAN GRANDE S CASTLE 

II 

Naples 
Red tiles, yellow stucco, layer on layer of windows, 
roofs, and balconies, Naples pushes up the hill away 
from the curving bay. A red, half-closed eye, 
Vesuvius watches and waits. All Naples prates of 
this and that, and runs about its little business, 
shouting, bawling, incessantly calling its wares. 
Fish frying, macaroni drying, seven feet piles of 
red and white brocoli, grapes heaped high with rose- 
mary, sliced pomegranates dripping seeds, plucked 
and bleeding chickens, figs on spits, lemons in baskets, 
melons cut and quartered nicely, "Ah, che bella 
cosa /" They even sell water, clear crystal water 
for a paid or two. And everything done to a hulla- 
baloo. They jabber over cheese, they chatter over 
wine, they gabble at the corners in the bright sun- 
shine. And piercing through the noise is the beggar- 



CAN Grande's castle 5 

whine, always, like an undertone, the beggar- whine ; 
and always the crimson, watching eye of Vesuvius. 

Have you seen her — the Ambassadress ? Ah, 
Bellissima Creatura 1 Una Donna Rara ! She is 
fairer than the Blessed Virgin ; and good ! Never 
was such a soul in such a body ! The role of her 
benefactions would stretch from here to Posilipo. 
And she loves the people, loves to go among them 
and speak to tliis one and that, and her apple- 
blossom face under the big blue hat works miracles 
like the Holy Images in the Churches. 

In her great house with the red marble stairway. 
Lady Hamilton holds brilliant sway. From her 
boudoir windows she can see the bay, and on the 
left, hanging there, a flame in a cresset, the blood- 
red glare of Vesu\'ius staring at the clear blue air. 

Blood-red on a night of stars, red like a wound, 
with lava scars. In the round wall-mirrors of her 



6 CAN Grande's castle 

boudoir, is the blackness of the bay, the whiteness 
of a star, and the bleeding redness of the mountain's 
core. Nothing more. All night long, in the mirrors, 
nothing more. Black water, red stain, and above, 
a star with its silver rain. 

Over the people, over the king, trip the little 
Ambassadorial feet ; fleet and light as a pigeon's 
wing, they brush over the artists, the friars, the 
abbSs, the Court. They bear her higher and higher 
at each step. Up and over the hearts of Naples 
goes the beautiful Lady Hamilton till she reaches 
even to the Queen ; then rests in a sheening, shimmer- 
ing altitude, between earth and sky, high and float- 
ing as the red crater of Vesuvius. Buoyed up and 
sustained in a blood-red destiny, all on fire for the 
world to see. 

Proud Lady Hamilton ! Superb Lady Hamilton ! 



CAN Grande's castle 7 

Quivering, blood-swept, vivid Lady Hamilton ! Your 
vigour is enough to awake the dead, as you tread 
the newly uncovered courtyards of Pompeii. There 
is a murmur all over the opera house when you enter 
your box. And your frocks ! Jesu ! What frocks ! 
"India painting on wyte sattin!" And a new 
camlet shawl, all sea-blue and blood-red, in an in- 
tricate pattern, given by Sir William to help you 
do your marvellous "Attitudes." Incomparable ac- 
tress ! No theatre built is big enough to compass 
you. It takes a world ; and centuries shall elbow 
each other aside to watch you act your part. Art, 
Emma, or heart ? 

The blood-red cone of Vesuvius glows in the night. 

She sings " Lrice Bella," and Naples cries " Brava I 
Ancora !" and claps its hands. She dances the 
tarantella, and poses before a screen with the red- 
blue shawl. It is the frescoes of Pompeii unfrozen; 



8 CAN Grande's castle 

it is the fine-cut profiles of Sicilian coins ; it is Apollo 
Belvedere himself — Goethe has said it. She wears 
a Turkish dress, and her face is sweet and lively as 
rippled water. 

The lava-streams of Vesuvius descend as far as 
Portici. She climbs the peak of fire at midnight — 
five miles of flame. A blood-red mountain, seeping 
tears of blood. She skips over glowing ashes and 
laughs at the pale, faded moon, wan in the light of 
the red-hot lava. What a night ! Spires and sparks 
of livid flame shooting into the black sky. Blood- 
red smears of fire ; blood-red gashes, flashing her 
out against the smouldering moimtain. A tossing 
fountain of blood-red jets, it sets her hair flicking 
into the air like licking flamelets of a burning aureole. 
Blood-red is everywhere. She wears it as a halo and 
diadem. Emma, Emma Hamilton, Ambassadress of 
Great Britain to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 



CAN GRANDE S CASTLE SI 

ni 

Aboukir Bat, Egypt 

North-north-west, and a whole-sail breeze, ruf- 
fling up the larkspur-blue sea, breaking the tops of 
the waves into egg-white foam, shoving ripple after 
ripple of pale jade-green over the shoals of Aboukir 
Bay. Away to the East rolls in the sluggish water 
of old Nile. West and South — hot, yellow land. 
Ships at anchor. Thirteen ships flying the tricolore, 
and riding at ease in a patch of blue water inside a 
jade-green hem. What of them ? Ah, fine ships ! 
The Orient, one hundred and twenty guns, Franklin, 
Tonnant, each with eighty. Weighty metal to float 
on a patch of blue with a green hem. They ride 
stem to stern, in a long line, pointing the way to 
Aboukir Bay. 

To the North are thunderheads, ballooning silver- 
white thunderheads rising up out of the horizon. 



10 CAN Grande's castle 

The thunderheads draw steadily up into the blue- 
blossomed sky. A topgallant breeze pushes them 
rapidly over the white-specked water. One, two, 
six, ten, thirteen separate tiered clouds, and the wind 
sings loud in their shrouds and spars. The royals 
are furled, but the topgallantsails and topsails are 
full and straining. Thirteen white thunderheads bear- 
ing down on Aboukir Bay. 

The Admiral is working the stump of his right 
arm ; do not cross his hawse, I advise you. 

" Youngster to the mast-head. What ! Going with- 
out your glass, and be damned to you ! Let me 
know what you see, immediately." 

"The enemy fleet. Sir, at anchor in the bay." 

"Bend on the signal to form in line of battle, Sir 
Ed'ard." 

The bright wind straightens the signal pennants 
until they stand out rigid like boards. 



CAN" Grande's castle ll 

" Captain Hood reports eleven fathoms. Sir, and 
shall he bear up and sound?" 

"Signal Captain Hood to lead, sounding." 

"By the mark ten! A quarter less nine! By 
the deep eight!" 

Round to starboard swing the white thunderheads, 
the water of their bows washing over the green jade 
hem.. An orange sunset steams in the shrouds, and 
glints upon the muzzles of the cannon in the open 
ports. The hammocks are down ; the guns run out 
and primed ; beside each is a pile of canister and 
grape ; gunners are blowing on their matches ; 
snatches of fife music drift down to the lower decks. 
In the cockpits, the surgeons are feeling the edges 
of knives and saws ; men think of their wives and 
swear softly, spitting on their hands. 

"Let go that anchor ! By God, she hangs !" 

Past the Guerrier slides the Goliath, but the anchor 



12 CAN Grande's castle 

drops and stops her on the inner quarter of the Con- 
quSrant. The Zealous brings up on the bow of the 
Guerrier, the Orion, Theseus, Audacious, are all come 
to, inside the French ships. 

The Vanguard, Admiral's pennant flying, is lying 
outside the Spartiate, distant only a pistol shot. 

In a pattern like a country dance, each balanced 
justly by its neighbour, lightly, with no apparent 
labour, the ships slip into place, and lace a design 
of white sails and yellow yards on the purple, 
flowing water. Almighty Providence, what a day ! 
Twenty-three sliips in one small bay, and away to 
the Eastward, the water of old Nile rolling slug- 
gishly between its sand-bars. 

Seven hundred and forty guns open fire on the 
French fleet. The sun sinks into the purple-red 
water, its low, straight light playing gold on the 
slaughter. Yellow fire, shot with red, in wheat 



CAN Grande's castle 13 

sheafs from the guns ; and a racket and ripping 
wliich jerks the nerves, then stuns, until another 
broadside crashes the ears ahve again. The men 
sliine with soot and sweat, and slip in the blood which 
wets the deck. 

The surgeons cut and cut, but men die steadily. 
It is heady work, this firing into ships not fifty feet 
distant. Lilac and grey, the heaving bay, slapped 
and torn by thousands of splashings of shot and 
spars. Great red stars peer through the smoke, a 
mast is broke short off at the lashings and falls over- 
board, with the rising moon flashing in its top- 
hamper. 

There is a rattle of musketry; pipe-clayed, red- 
coated marines swab, and fire, and swab. A round 
shot finishes the job, and tears its way out through 
splintering bulwarks. The roar of broadside after 
broadside echoes from the shore in a long, hoarse 



14 CAN Grande's castle 

humming. Drums beat in little fire-cracker snap- 
pings, and a boatswain's whistle wires, thin and 
sharp, through the din, and breaks short off against 
the scream of a gun crew, cut to bits by a bursting 
cannon. 

Three times they clear the Vanguard's guns of a 
muck of corpses, but each new crew comes on with 
a cheer and each discharge is a jeer of derision. 

The Admiral is hit. A flying sliver of iron has 
shivered his head and opened it, the skin lies quiver- 
ing over his one good eye. He sees red, blood-red, 
and the roar of the guns sounds like water running 
over stones. He has to be led below. 

Eight bells, and the poop of the Orient is on fire. 
"Higher, men, train your guns a little higher. Don't 
give them a loophole to scotch the flame. 'Tis their 
new fine paint they'll have to blame." Yellow and 
red, waving tiger-lilies, the flames shoot up — round. 



CAN Grande's castle 15 

serrated petals, flung out of the black-and-silver cup 
of the bay. Each stay is wound with a flickering 
fringe. The ropes curl up and shrivel as though a 
twinge of pain withered them. Spasm after spasm 
convulses the ship. A Clap ! — A Crash ! — A Boom ! 
— and silence. The ships have ceased firing. 

Ten, twenty, forty seconds . , . 

Then a dash of water as masts and spars fall from 
an immense height, and in the room of the floating, 
licking tiger-lily is a chasm of yellow and red whirl- 
ing eddies. The guns start firing again. 

Foot after foot across the sky goes the moon, with 
her train of swirling silver-blue stars. 

The day is fair. In the clear Egyptian air, the 
water of Aboukir Bay is as blue as the bottom flowers 
of a larkspur spray. The shoals are green with a 
white metal shoon, and between its sand-bars the 
Nile can be seen, slowly rolling out to sea. 



16 CAN Grande's castle 

The Admiral's head is bound up, and his eye is 
bloodshot and very red, but he is sitting at his desk 
writing, for all that. Through the stern windows is 
the blue of the sea, and reflections dance waver- 
ingly on liis paper. This is what he has written : 

"Vanguard. Mouth of the Nile. 

August 8th, 1798. 
My dear Sir — 

Almighty God has made me the happy instru- 
ment in destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, 
will be a blessing to Europe ... I hope there will 
be no difficulty in our getting refitted at Naples . . . 
Your most obliged and affectionate 

Horatio Nelson." 

Dance, little reflections of blue water, dance, whi'e 
there is yet time. 



CAN Grande's castle 17 

IV 

Naples 
"Get out of the way, with your skewbald ass. 
Heu ! Heu!" There is scant room for the quaUty 
to pass up and down the whole Strada di Toledo. 
Such a running to and fro ! Such a clacking, and 
clapping, and fleering, and cheering. Holy Mother 
of God, the town has gone mad. Listen to the bells. 
They will crack the very doors of Heaven with their 
jangling. The sky seems the hot half-hollow of a 
clanging bell. I verily believe they will rock the 
steeples off their foundations. Ding ! Dang ! Dong ! 
Jingle-Jingle! Clank! Clink! Twitter! Tingle! 
Half Naples is hanging on the ropes, I vow it is 
louder than when they crown the Pope. The lapis- 
lazuli pillars in Jesus Church positively lurch with 
the noise ; the carvings of Santa Chiara are at swing- 
ing poise. In San Domenico Maggiore, the altar 



18 CAN Grande's castle 

quivers ; Santa Maria del Carmine's chimes run 
like rivers tinkling over stones ; the big bell of the 
Cathedral hammers and drones. It is gay to-day, 
with all the bells of Naples at play. 

That's a fine equipage ; those bays shine like satin. 
"Why, it is the British Ambassadress, and two British 
officers with her in the carriage ! Where is her hat ? 
Tut, you fool, she doesn't need one, she is wearing a 
ribbon like a Roman senator. Blue it is, and there 
are gold letters : "Nelson and Victory." The woman 
is undoubtedly mad, but it is a madness which kindles. 
" Viva Nelson I Viva Miladi / " Half a hundred hats 
are flying in the air like kites, and all the white hand- 
kerchiefs in Naples wave from the balconies. 

Brava, Emma Hamilton, a fig for the laws of good 
taste, your heart beats blood, not water. Let palc- 
livered ladies wave decorously ; do you drive tlie 
streets and tell the lazzaroni the good news. Proud 
Lady Hamilton ! Mad, whole-hearted Lady Hamil- 



CAN Grande's castle 19 

ton ! Viva I Viva ancora I Wear your Nelson- 
anchor earrings for the sun to flash in ; cut a dash 
in your new bhie shawl, spotted with these same 
anchors. What if lily-tongued dandies dip their 
pens in gall to jeer at you, your blood is alive. The 
red of it stains a bright band across the pages of 
history. The others are ghosts, rotting in aged 
tombs. Light your three thousand lamps, that 
your windows spark and twinkle "Nelson" for all 
the world to see, and even the little wavelets of the 
bay have a largess of gold petals dropped from his 
name. Rule, Britannia, though she doesn't deserve 
it ; it is all Nelson and the Ambassadress, in the 
streets of Naples. 

He has rooms at the Palazzo Sesso, the British 
Admiral, and all day long he watches the red, half- 
closed eye of Vesuvius gazing down at his riding 
ships. At night, there is a red plume over the moun- 



20 CAN Grande's castle 

tain, and the light of it fills the room with a crimson 
glow, it might be a gala lit for him. His eyes swim. 
In the open sky hangs a steel-white star, and a bar 
of silver cuts through the red reflections of the 
mirrors. Red and silver, for the bay is not blue 
at night. 

"Oh brave Nelson, oh God bless and protect our 
brave deliverer, oh, Nelson, Nelson, what do we not 
owe to you." Sea-blue, the warp ; but the thread 
of the woof is bolted red. Fiddlers and dinners — 
Well, or Hell ! as the case may be. Queens, popu- 
lace — these are things, like guns, to face. Rostral 
Columns and birthday fetes jar the nerves of a 
wounded head ; it is better in bed, in the rosy gloom 
of a plume-lit room. 

So the Admiral rests in the Palazzo Sesso, the guest 
of his Ambassador, and his ships ride at anchor under 
the flaming mountain. 



CAN Grande's castle 21 

The shuttle shoots, the shuttle weaves. The red 
thread to the blue thread cleaves. The web is plait- 
mg which nothing unreaves. 

The Admiral buys the Ambassadress a table, a 
pleasant tribute to hospitality. It is of satin-wood, 
sprinkled over with little flying loves arrayed in 
pink and blue sashes. They sit at this table for 
hours, he and she, discussing the destiny of the 
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and her voice is like 
water tinkling over stones, and her face is like the 
same water twinkling in shallows. 

She counts his money for him, and laughs at his 
inability to reduce carolins to English sixpences. 
She drives him out to Caserta to see the Queen, and 
parades him on the Chiaia to delight the common 
people. She is always before him, a mist of rose 
and silver, a damask irradiation, shading and light- 
ing like a palpitant gem. 



22 CAN Grande's castle 

In the evenings, by the light of two wax candles, 
the Admiral writes kind acknowledgements to the 
tributes of half a world. Moslem and Christian 
sweetly united to stamp out liberty. It is an in- 
spiring sight to see. Rule Britannia indeed, with 
Slavs and Turks boosting up her footstool. The 
Sultan has sent a Special Envoy bearing gifts : the 
Chelenck — "Plume of Triumph," all in diamonds, 
and a pelisse of sables, just as bonds of his eternal 
gratitude. "Viva il Tiirco T' says Lady Hamilton. 
The Mother of His Sultanic Majesty begs that the 
Admiral's pocket may be the repository of a diamond- 
studded box to hold his snuff. The Russian Tzar, a 
bit self-centred as most monarchs are, sends him his 
portrait, diamond-framed of course. The King of 
Sardinia glosses over his fewer gems by the richness 
of his compliments. The East India Company, se- 
cure of its trade, has paid him ten thousand pounds. 



CAN Grande's castle 23 

The Turkish Company has given him plate. A 
grateful country augments his state by creating him 
the smallest kind of peer, with a couple of tuppences 
a year, and veneering it over by a grant of arms, 
^rms for an arm, but what for an eye ! Does the 
Admiral smile as he writes his reply? Writes with 
his left hand that he is aware of the high honour it 
will be to bear this shield : "A chief undulated 
argent, from which a palm-tree issuant, between a 
disabled ship on the dexter, and a ruinous battery on 
the sinister, all proper." "Very proper, indeed," 
nods Sir William, but Lady Hamilton prods the 
coloured paper shield a trifle scornfully. "If I was 
King of England, I would make you Duke Nelson, 
Marquis Nile, Earl Aboukir, Viscount Pyramid, 
Baron Crocodile and Prince Victory." "My dear 
Emma, what a child you are," says Sir William, but 
the Admiral looks out of the window at the blood- 
red mountain and says nothing at all. 



24 CAN Grande's castle 

Something shakes Naples. Shakes so violently 
that it makes the candles on the Admiral's writing- 
table flicker. Earthquakes, perhaps. Aye, earth- 
quakes, but not from the red, plumed mountain. The 
dreadful tread of marching men is rocking the Bour- 
bon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the fanfare of 
Republican trumpets blows over the city like a great 
wind. It swirls the dust of Monarchy in front of it, 
across Naples and out over the Chiaia to the sea. 
/ The Admiral walks his quarter-deck with the blue 
bay beneath him, but his eyes are red with the glare 
of Vesuvius, and the blood beats in and out of his 
heart so rapidly that he is almost stifled. All Naples 
is red to the Admiral, but the core of crimson is the 
Palazzo Sesso, in whose windows, at night, the sil- 
ver stars flash so brightly. "Crimson and silver," 
thinks the Admiral, "O Emma, Emma Hamilton!" 



CAN Grande's castle 25 

It is December now, and Naples is heaving and 
shuddering with the force of the Earth shock. There 
is no firm ground on which to stand. Beneath the 
Queen's footsteps is a rocking jelly. Even the water 
of the bay boUs and churns and knocks loudly against 
the wooden sides of the British ships. 

Over the satin-wood table, the Admiral and the 
Ambassadress sit in consultation, and red fire flares 
between them across its polished surface. "My 
adorable, unfortunate Queen! Dear, dear Queen!" 
Lady Hamilton's eyes are carbuncles burning into 
the Admiral's soul. He is dazzled, confused, used 
to the glare on blue water he thinks he sees it now. 
It is Duty and Kings. Caste versus riff-raff. The 
roast-beef of old England against fried frogs' legs. 

Red, blood-red, figures the weaving pattern, red 
blushing over blue, flushing the fabric purple, like 
lees of wine. 



26 cAjv Grande's castle 

A blustering night to go to a party. But the 
coach is ready, and Lord Nelson is arrived from his 
ship. Official persons cannot give the slip to other 
official persons, and it is Kelim Effendi who gives 
the reception, the Sultan's Special Envoy. "Wait," 
to the coachman; then lights, jewels, sword-click- 
ings, compliments, a promenade round the rooms, 
bowing, and a quick, unwatched exit from a side 
door. Someone will wake the snoring coachman 
hours hence and send him away. But it will not be 
his Master or Mistress, These hurry through dark, 
windy streets to the Molesiglio, How the waves 
flow by in the darkness! "A heavy ground-swell," 
says the Admiral, but there is a lull in the wind, A 
password in English — we are all very English to- 
night. "Can you find your way, Emma?" Sir 
William is perturbed. But the Ambassadress is 
gone, gone lightly, swiftly, up the dark mole and 



CAN Grande's castle 27 

disappeared through a postern in the wall. She is 
aflame, scorching with red and gold fires, a torch of 
scarlet and ochre, a meteor of sulphur and chrome 
dashed with vermilion. 

There are massacres in the streets of Naples ; in 
the Palace, a cowering Queen. This is melodrama, 
and Emma is the Princess of Opera Bouffe. Opera 
Bouffe, with Death as Pulchinello. Ho ! Ho ! You 
laugh. A merry fellow, and how if Death had you 
by the gizzard ? Comedy and Tragedy shift masks, 
but Emma is intent on her task and sees neither. 
Frightened, vacillating monarchs to guide down a 
twisting stair; but there is Nelson climbing up. 
And there are lanterns, cutlasses, pistols, and, at 
last, the night air, black slapping water, and boats. 

They are afloat, off the trembling, quivering soil 
of Naples, and their way is lit by a blood-red glimmer 
from the tossing fires of Vesuvius. 



28 CAN GRANDE S CASTLE 

V 
Palermo, et al. 

Storm-tossed water, and an island set in a sea 
as blue as the bottom flowers of a spike of larkspur, 
come upon out of a hurly-burly of wind, and rain, 
and jagged waves. Through it all has walked the 
Ambassadress like some starry saint, pouring mercy 
out of full hands. The Admiral sees her misted 
with rose and purple, radiating comfort in a phos- 
phoric glow. Is it wise to light one's life with an 
iridescence ? Perhaps not, but the bolt is shot. 

The stuff is weaving. Now one thread is upper- 
most, now another, making striae of reds and blues, 
or clouding colour over colour. 

There are lemon groves, and cool stars, and love 
flooding beneath them. There are slanting decks, 
and full sails, and telescopes, wearying to a one-eyed 



CAN Grande's castle 29 

man. Then a span of sunlight under pink oleanders ; 
and evenings beneath painted ceilings, surrounded 
by the hum of a court. 

Naples again, with cannon blazing. A haze of or- 
ders, documents, pardons, and a hanging. Palermo, 
and Dukedoms and "Nostra Liberatore." One can- 
not see everything with one eye. Flight is pos- 
sible, but misted vision shows strange shapes. It 
is Opera Bouffe, with Tragedy in the front row. 
Downing Street hints reproof, mentions stories of 
gaming-tables and high piles of gold. What non- 
sense to talk of a duel ! Sir William and the Admiral 
live like brothers. But they will not be silent, those 
others. " Poor Lady Nelson, what will she do ? " Still 
it is true that the lady in question is a bit of a shrew. 

Blood beats back and forth under the lemon 
groves, proving itself a right of way. "I worship, 
nay, adore you, and if you was single, and I found 



30 CAN Grande's castle 

you under a hedge, I would instantly marry you. 
Santa Emma ! As truly as I believe in God, do I 
believe you are a saint." If the lady is a saint and 
he her acolyte, it is by a Divine right. These are 
the ways of Heaven ; the Admiral prays and knows 
himself forgiven and absolved. 

Revolve slowly, shuttle of the blue thread, red is 
a strong colour under Sicilian skies. 

VI 

Leghorn to London 
A Court, an Ambassador, and a great Admiral, 
in travelling carriages rolling over the map of Europe. 
Straining up hills, bowling along levels, rolling down 
slopes, and all to the tune of " Hip ! Hip ! Hurrah ! " 
From Leghorn to Florence, to Ancona, to Trieste, is 
one long Festa. Every steeple sways with clashing 
bells, and people line the roads, yelling "Viva Nel- 
son I HolaJ Hola! Viva Inyhilterra !"" Wherever 



CAN Grande's castle 31 

they go, it is a triumphal progress and a pinny-pinny- 
poppy-show. Whips crack, sparks fly, sails fill — 
another section of the map is left behind. Carriages 
again, up hill and down, from the seaboard straight 
into Austria. 

Hip ! Hip ! Hip ! The wheels roll into Vienna. 
Then what a to-do ! Concerts, Operas, Fireworks 
too. Dinners where one hundred six-foot grenadiers 
do the waiting at table. Such grandiloquence ! 
Such splendid, regal magnificence ! Trumpets and 
cannons, and Nelson's health ; the Jew wealth of 
Baron Arnstein, and the excellent wine of his cellars. 
Haydn conducts an oratorio while the guests are 
playing faro. Delightful city ! What a pity one 
must leave ! These are rewards worthy of the Battle 
of the Nile. You smile. Tut ! Tut ! Remember they 
are only foreigners ; the true British breed writes 
home scurvy letters for all London to read. Hip ! 
Hip ! God save the King ! 



32 CAN gkande's castle 

For two months, the travelling carriages stand in 
the stables ; but horses are put to them at last, and 
they are off again. No Court this time; but what 
is a fleeing Queen to a victorious Admiral ! Up hill, 
down dale, round and round roU the sparkling wheels, 
kicking up all the big and little stones of Austria. 
"Huzza for the Victor of Aboukir!" shouts the 
populace. The traces tighten, and the carriages 
are gone. In and out of Prague roll the wheels, and 
across the border into Germany. 

Dresden at last, but an Electress turning her back 
on Lady Hamilton. A stuffy state, with a fussy 
etiquette! Why distress oneself for such a rebuff.'' 
Emma will get even with them yet. It is enough for 
her to do her "Attitudes," and to perfection. And 
still — and still — But Lady Hamilton has an iron 
will. 



CAN Grande's castle 33 

Proud Lady Hamilton ! Blood-betrayed, hot- 
hearted Lady Hamilton ! The wheels roll out of 
Dresden, and Lady Hamilton looks at the Admiral. 
"Oh, Nelson, Nelson." But the whips are cracking 
and one cannot hear. 

Roll over Germany, wheels. Roll through Magde- 
burg, Lodwostz, Anhalt. Roll up to the banks of the 
Elbe, and deposit your travellers in a boat once more. 
Along the green shores of the green-and-brown river 
to Hamburg, where merchants and bankers are wait- 
ing to honour the man who has saved their gold. 
Huzza for Nelson, Saviour of Banks ! Where is the 
frigate a thankful country might have sent him ? 
Not there. Why did he come overland, forsooth.' 
The Lion and the Unicorn are uncouth beasts, but 
we do not mind in the least. No, indeed ! We take 
a packet and land at Yarmouth. 



34 CAN Grande's castle 

"Hip! Hip! Hip! God save the King! Long 
live Nelson, Britain's Pride!" The common people 
are beside themselves with joy, there is no alloy to 
their welcome. Before The Wrestler's inn, troops 
are paraded. And every road is arcaded with flags 
and flowers. "He is ours! Hip! Hip! Nelson!" 
Cavalcades of volunteer cavalry march before him. 
Two days to London, and every road bordered with 
smiling faces. They cannot go faster than a footpace 
because the carriage is drawn by men. Muskets 
pop, and every shop in every town is a flutter of 
bunting. 

Red, Lady Hamilton, red welcome for your Ad- 
miral. Red over foggy London. Bow bells peeling, 
and the crowded streets reeling through fast tears. 
Years, Emma, and Naples covered by their ashes. 

Blood-red, his heart flashes to hers, but the great 
city of London is blurred to both of them. 



CAN gilvnde's castle 35 

VII 

Merton 
Early Autumn, and a light breeze rustling through 
the trees of Paradise Merton, and pashing the ripples 
of the Little Nile against the sides of the arched stone 
bridge. It is ten o'clock, and through the blowing 
leaves, the lighted windows of the house twinkle 
like red, pulsing stars. Far down the road is a jingle 
of harness, and a crunching of wheels. Out of the 
darkness flare the lamps of a post-chaise, blazing bas- 
ilisk eyes, making the smooth sides of leaves shine, 
as they approach, the darkness swallowing in behind 
them. A rattle, a stamping of hoofs, and the chaise 
comes to a stand opposite a wooden gate. It is not 
late, maybe a bit ahead of time. The post-boy eases 
himself in the saddle, and loosens his reins. The 
light from the red windows glitters in the varnished 
panels of the chaise. 



36 CAN Grande's castle 

How tear himself away from so dear a home ! 
Can he wrench himself apart, can he pull his heart 
out of his body? Her face is pitiful with tears. 
Two years gone, and only a fortnight returned. His 
head hums with the rushing of his blood. "Wife in 
the sight of Heaven" — surely one life between them 
now, and yet the summons has come. Blue water 
is calling, the peaked seas beckon. 

The Admiral kneels beside his child's bed, and 
prays. These are the ways of the Almighty. "His 
will be done." Pathetic trust, thrusting aside de- 
sire. The fire on the hearth is faint and glowing, 
and throws long shadows across the room. How 
quiet it is, how far from battles and crowning 
seas. 

She strains him in her arms, she whispers, sob- 
bing, "Dearest husband of my heart, you are all 



CAN Grande's castle 37 

the world to Emma." She delays his going by 
minute and minute. "My Dearest and most Be- 
loved, God protect you and my dear Horatia and 
grant us a happy meeting. Amen! Amen!" 

Tear, blue shuttle, through the impeding red, but 
have a care lest the thread snap in following, 

"God bless you, George. Take care of Lady 
Hamilton." He shakes his brother-in-law by the 
hand. The chaise door bangs. The post-boy flicks 
his whip, the horses start forward. Red windows 
through flecking trees. Blood-red windows growing 
dimmer behind him, until they are only a shimmer 
in the distance. His eyes smart, searching for their 
faint glimmer through blowing trees. His eyes 
smart with tears, and fears which seem to haunt 
him. All night he drives, through Guildford, over 
Hindhead, on his way to Portsmouth. 



38 CAN Grande's castle 

VIII 

At Sea, off Cape Trafalgak 
Blue as the tip of a deep blue salvia blossom, the 
inverted cup of the sky arches over the sea. Up to 
meet it, in a concave curve of bright colour, rises 
the water, flat, unrippled, for the wind scarcely stirs. 
How comes the sky so full of clouds on the horizon, 
with none over head ? Clouds ! Great clouds of 
canvas ! Mighty ballooning clouds, bearing thunder 
and crinkled lightning in their folds. They roll up 
out of the horizon, tiered, stately. Sixty-four great 
thunder-clouds, more perhaps, throwing their shadows 
over ten miles of sea. 

Boats dash back and forth. Their ordered oars 
sparkling like silver as they lift and fall. Frigate 
captains receiving instructions, coming aboard the 



CAN Grande's castle 39 

flagship, departing from it. Blue and white, with a 
silver flashing of boats. 

Thirty-three clouds headed South, twenty-three 
others converging upon them ! They move over 
the water as silently as the drifting air. Lines to 
lines, drawing nearer on the faint impulse of the 
breeze. 

Blue coated, flashing with stars, the Admiral walks 
up and down the poop. Stars on his breast, in 
his eyes the white glare of the sea. The enemy 
wears, looping end to end, and waits, poised in a 
half-circle like a pale new moon upon the water. 
The British ships point straight to the hollow 
between the horns, and even their stu'nsails are 
set. Arrows flung at a crescent over smooth blue 
water. 



40 CAN Grande's castle 

"Now, Blackwood, I am going to amuse the fleet 
with a signal. Mr. Pasco, I wish to say to the fleet, 
' England confides that every man will do his duty.' 
You must be quick, for I have one more to make, 
which is for close action." 

"If your Lordship will permit me to substitute 
'expects' for 'confides,' it will take less time, be- 
cause 'expects' is in the vocabulary and 'confides' 
must be spelt." 

Flutter flags, fling out your message to the ad- 
vancing arrows. Ripple and fly over the Admiral's 
head. Signal flags are of all colours, but the Ad- 
miral sees only the red. It beats above him, out- 
lined against the salvia-blue sky. A crimson blossom 
sprung from his heart, the banner royal of his Destiny 
struck out sharply against the blue of Heaven. 

Frigate Captain Blackwood bids good-bye to the 



CAN Grande's castle 41 

Admiral. "I trust, my Lord, that on my return to 
the Victor]/, I shall find your Lordship well and in 
possession of twenty prizes." A gash of blood- 
colour cuts across the blue sky, or is it that the Ad- 
miral's eyes are tired with the flashing of the sea.'' 
"God bless you, Blackwood, I shall never speak to 
you again." What is it that haunts his mind? He 
is blinded by red, blood-red fading to rose, smeared 
purple, blotted out by blue. Larkspur sea and blue 
sky above it, with the flickering flags of his signal 
standing out in cameo. 

Boom ! A shot passes through the main top- 
gallantsail of the Victory. The ship is under fire. 
Her guns cannot bear while she is head on. Straight 
at the floating half-moon of ships goes the Victory, 
leading her line, muffled in the choking smoke of the 
Bucentaure's guns. The sun is dimmed, but through 
the smoke-cloud prick diamond sparkles from the Ad- 



42 CAN Grande's castle 

miral's stars as he walks up and down the quarter-deck. 
Red glare of guns in the Admiral's eyes. Red 
stripe of marines drawn up on the poop. Eight are 
carried off by a single shot, and the red stripe lique- 
fies, and seeps, lapping, down the gangway. Every 
stu'nsail boom is shot away. The blue of the sea 
has vanished ; there is only the red of cannon, and 
the white twinkling sparks of the Admiral's stars. 

The bows of the Victory cross the wake of the 
Bucentaure, and one after another, as they bear, 
the double-shotted guns tear through the woodwork 
of the French ship. The Victory slips past like a 
shooting shuttle, and runs on board the Redoubtable, 
seventy-four, and their spars lock, with a shock 
which almost stops their headway. 

It is a glorious Autumn day outside the puff-ball 
of smoke. A still, blue sea, unruffled, banded to 
silver by a clear sun. 



CAN Grande's castle 43 

Guns of the Victory, guns of the Redoubtable, ex- 
ploding incessantly, making one long draw of sound. 
Rattling upon it, rain on a tin roof, the pop-pop of 
muskets from the mizzen-top of the Redoubtable. 
There are sharpshooters in the niizzen-top, aiming 
at the fog below. Suddenly, through it, spears the 
gleam of diamonds ; it is the Admiral's stars, re- 
flecting the flashes of the guns. 

Red blood in a flood before his eyes. Red from 
horizon to zenith, crushing down like beaten metal. 
The Admiral falls to his knees, to his side, and lies 
there, and the crimson glare closes over him, a cupped 
inexorable end. "They have done for me at last. 
Hardy. My back-bone is shot through." 

The blue thread is snapped and the bolt falls from j 
the loom. Weave, shuttle of the red thread. Weave 
over and under yourself in a scarlet ecstasy. It is 



44 CAN Grande's castle 

all red now lie comes to die. Red, with the white j 

sparkles of those cursed stars. 

Carry him gently down, and let no man know that 
it is the Admiral who has fallen. He covers his face 
and his stars with his handkerchief. The white 
glitter is quenched ; the white glitter of his life will 
shine no more. "Doctor, I am gone. I leave Lady 
Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to 
my Country." Pathetic trust, thrusting aside knowl- 
edge. Flint, the men who sit in Parliament, flint 
which no knocking can spark to fire. But you still 
believe in men's goodness, knowing only your own 
heart. "Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, 
and all other things belonging to me." 

The red darkens, and is filled with tossing fires. 
He sees Vesuvius, and over it the single silver brill- 
iance of a star. 



CAN Grande's castle 45 

"One would like to live a little longer, but thank 

God, I have done my duty." 

Slower, slower, passes the red thread and stops. 

The weaving is done. 

In the log-book of the Victory, it is written : "Par- 
tial firing continued until 4.30, when a victory hav- 
ing been reported to the Right Honourable Lord 
Viscount Nelson, K.B,, he died of his wound." 

IX 

Calais 
It is a timber-yard, pungent with the smell of 
wood : Oak, Pine, and Cedar. But under the piles 
of white boards, they say there are bones rotting. 
An old guide to Calais speaks of a wooden marker 
shaped like a battledoor, handle downwards, on the 
broad part of which was scratched : "Emma Hamil- 



46 CAN Grande's castle 

ton, England's Friend." It was a poor thing and 
now even that has gone. Let us buy an oak chip 
for remenibrance. It will only cost a sou. 



GUNS AS KEYS: AND THE GREAT 
GATE SWINGS 



GUNS AS KEYS: AND THE GREAT 
GATE SWINGS 

Part I 
Due East, far West. Distant as the nests of the 
opposite winds. Removed as fire and water are, as 
the clouds and the roots of the hills, as the wills of 
youth and age. Let the key-guns be mounted, make 
a brave show of waging war, and pry off the lid of 
Pandora's box once more. Get in at any cost, and 
let out at little, so it seems, but wait — wait — there 
is much to follow through the Great Gate ! 

They do not see things in quite that way, on this 
bright November day, with sun flashing, and waves 
splashing, up and down Chesapeake Bay. On shore, 
all the papers are running to press with huge head- 



50 CAN Grande's castle 

lines: "Commodore Perry Sails." Dining-tables 
buzz with travellers' tales of old Japan culled 
from Dutch writers. But we are not like the Dutch. 
No shutting the stars and stripes up on an island. 
Pooh ! We must trade wherever we have a mind. 
i Naturally ! 

The wharves of Norfolk are falling behind, becom- 
ing smaller, confused with the warehouses and the 
trees. On the impetus of the strong South breeze, 
the paddle-wheel steam frigate, Mississippi, of the 
United States Navy, sails down the flashing bay. 
Sails away, and steams away, for her furnaces are 
burning, and her paddle-wheels turning, and all her 
sails are set and full. Pull, men, to the old chorus : 
"A Yankee ship sails down the river, 

Blow, boys, blow ; 

Her masts and spars they shine like silver. 

Blow, my bully boys, blow." 



CAN Grande's castle 51 

But what Is the use? That plaguy brass band 
blares out with "The Star Spangled Banner," and 
you cannot hear the men because of it. Which is 
a pity, thinks the Commodore, in his cabin, study- 
ing the map, and marking stepping-stones : Madeira, 
Cape Town, Mauritius, Singapore, nice firm stepping- 
places for seven-league boots. Flag-stones up and 
down a hemisphere. 

My ! How she throws the water off from her bows, 
and how those paddle-wheels churn her along at the 
rate of seven good knots ! You are a proud lady, 
Mrs. Mississippi, curtseying down Chesapeake Bay, 
all a-flutter with red wliite and blue ribbons. 

At Mishima in the Province of Kai, 
Three men are trying to measure a pine tree 
By the length of their outstretched arms. 
Trying to span the bole of a huge pine tree 
By the spread of their lifted arms. 



52 CAN Grande's castle 

Attempting to compress its girth 
Within the limit of their extended arms. 
Beyond, Fuji, 
Majestic, inevitable. 
Wreathed over by wisps of cloud. 
The clouds draw about the mountain. 
But there are gaps. 
The men reach about the pine tree, 
But their hands break apart ; 
The rough bark escapes their hand-clasps ; 
The tree is unencircled. 
Three men are trying to measure the stem of a 

gigantic pine tree. 
With their arms. 
At Mishima in the Province of Kai. 

Furnaces are burning good Cumberland coal at the 
rate of twenty-six tons per diem, and the paddle- 
wheels turn round and round in an iris of spray. 



CAN Grande's castle 53 

She noses her way through a wallowing sea ; foots 
it, bit by bit, over the slanting wave slopes; pants 
along, thrust forward by her breathing furnaces, 
urged ahead by the wind draft flattening against 
her taut sails. 

The Commodore, leaning over the taflFrail, sees the 
peak of Madeira sweep up out of the haze. The 
Mississippi glides into smooth water, and anchors 
under the lee of the "Desertas." 

Ah ! the purple bougainvilia ! And the sweet smells 
of the heliotrope and geranium hedges ! Ox-drawn 
sledges clattering over cobbles — what a fine pause 
in an endless voyaging. Stars and stripes demand- 
ing five hundred tons of coal, ten thousand gallons 
of water, resting for a moment on a round stepping- 
stone, with the drying sails slatting about in the 
warm wind. 

"Get out your accordion, Jim, and give us the 



54 CAN Grande's castle 

'Suwannee River' to show those Dagoes what a 

tune is. Pipe up with the chorus, boys. Let her 

go." 

The green water flows past Madeira. Flows un- 
der the paddle-boards, making them clip and clap. 
The green water washes along the sides of the Com- 
modore's steam flagship and passes away to leeward. 

"Hitch up your trowsers. Black Face, and do a 
horn-pipe. It's a fine quiet night for a double 
shuffle. Keep her going, Jim. Louder. That's the 
ticket. Gosh, but you can spin, Blackey!" 

The road is hilly 

Outside the Tiger Gate, 

And striped with shadows from a bow moon 

Slowly sinking to the horizon. 

The roadway twinkles with the bobbing of paper 

lanterns. 
Melon-shaped, round, oblong. 



CAN Grande's castle 55 

Lighting the steps of those who pass along it ; 
And there is a sweet singing of many semi. 
From the cages which an insect-seller 
Carries on his back. 

Westward of the Canaries, in a wind-blazing sea. 
Engineers, there, extinguish the furnaces ; carpen- 
ters, quick, your screwdrivers and mallets, and un- 
ship the paddle-boards. Break out her sails, quar- 
termasters, the wind will carry her faster than she 
can steam, for the trades have her now, and are whip- 
ping her along in fine clipper style. Key-guns, your 
muzzles shine like basalt above the tumbling waves. 
Polished basalt cameoed upon malachite. Yankee- 
doodle-dandy ! A fine upstanding ship, clouded with 
canvas, slipping along like a trotting filly out of the 
Commodore's own stables. White sails and sailors, 
blue-coated officers, and red in a star sparked through 
the claret decanter on the Commodore's luncheon 
table. 



66 CAN Grande's castle 

The Commodore is writing to his wife, to be posted 
at the next stopping place. Two years is a long time 
to be upon the sea. 

Nigi-oi of Matsuba-ya 

Celebrated oiran, 

Courtesan of unrivalled beauty, 

The great silk mercer, Mitsui, 

Counts himself a fortunate man 

As he watches her parade in front of him 

In her robes of glazed blue silk 

Embroidered with singing nightingales. 

He puflFs his little silver pipe 

And arranges a fold of her dress. 

He parts it at the neck 

And laughs when the falling plum-blossoms 

Tickle her naked breasts. 

The next morning he makes out a bill 

To the Director of the Dutch Factory at Nagasaki 



CAN Grande's castle 57 

For three times the amount of the goods 
Forwarded that day in two small junks 
In the care of a trusted clerk. 

The North-east trades have smoothed away into 
hot, blue doldrums. Paddle-wheels to the rescue. 
Thank God, we live in an age of invention. What 
air there is, is dead ahead. The deck is a bed of 
cinders, we wear a smoke cloud like a funeral plume. 
Funeral — of whom .'' Of the little heathens inside 
the Gate ? Wait ! Wait ! These monkey-men have 
got to trade, Uncle Sam has laid his plans with care, 
see those black guns sizzling there. "It's deuced 
hot," says a lieutenant, "I wish I could look in at a 
hop in Newport this evening." 

The one hundred and sixty streets in the Sanno 

quarter 
Are honey-gold. 



58 CAN Grande's castle 

Honey -gold from the gold-foil screens in the houses. 

Honey-gold from the fresh yellow mats ; 

The lintels are draped with bright colours, 

And from eaves and poles 

Red and white paper lanterns 

Glitter and swing. 

Through the one hundred and sixty decorated 

streets of the Sanno quarter, 
Trails the procession, 
With a bright slowness. 
To the music of flutes and drums. 
Great white sails of cotton 
Belly out along the honey -gold streets. 
Sword bearers. 
Spear bearers, 
Mask bearers, 

Grinning masks of mountain genii. 
And a white cock on a drum 
Above a purple sheet. 



CAN Grande's castle 59 

Over the flower hats of the people, 
Shines the sacred palanquin, 
*' Car of gentle motion," 
Upheld by fifty men. 
Stalwart servants of the god. 
Bending under the weight of mirror-black lacquer, 
Of pillars and roof-tree 
Wrapped in chased and gilded copper. 
Portly silk tassels sway to the marching of feet, 
Wreaths of gold and silver flowers ! 
Shoot sudden scintillations at the gold-foil screens. 
The golden phoenix on the roof of the palanquin 
Spreads its wings. 
And seems about to take flight 
Over the one hundred and sixty streets 
Straight into the white heart 
Of the curved blue sky. 
Six black oxen, 
With white and red trappings. 



60 CAN Grande's castle 

Draw platforms on which are musicians, dancers, 

actors, 
Who posture and sing. 
Dance and parade. 
Up and down the honey-gold streets. 
To the sweet playing of flutes. 
And the ever-repeating beat of heavy drums. 
To the constant banging of heavily beaten drums, 
To the insistent repeating rhythm of beautiful 

great drums. 

Across the equator and panting down to Saint 
Helena, trailing smoke like a mourning veil. James- 
town jetty, and all the officers in the ship making at 
once for Longwood. Napoleon ! Ah, tales — tales 
— with nobody to tell them. A bronze eagle caged 
by floating woodwork. A heart burst with beating 
on a flat drop-curtain of sea and sky. Nothing now 
but pigs in a sty. Pigs rooting in the Emperor's bed- 



CAN Grande's castle 61 

room. God be praised, we have a plumed smoking 
ship to take us away from this desolation. 
"Boney was a warrior 
Away-i-oh ; 
Boney was a warrior, 
John Frangois." 
"Oh, shut up, Jack, you make me sick. Those 
pigs are like worms eating a corpse. Bah ! " 

The ladies, 

Wistaria Blossom, Cloth-of-Silk, and Deep Snow, 

With their ten attendants. 

Are come to Asakusa 

To gaze at peonies. 

To admire crimson-carmine peonies. 

To stare in admiration at bomb-shaped, white 

and sulphur peonies. 
To caress with a soft finger 
Single, rose-flat peonies, 



62 CAN Grande's castle 

Tight, incurved, red-edged peonies, 
Spin-wheel circle, amaranth peonies. 
To smell the acrid pungence of peony blooms. 
And dream for months afterwards 
Of the temple garden at Asakusa, 
Where they walked together 
Looking at peonies. 

The Gate! The Gate! The far-shining Gate! 
Pat your guns and thank your stars you have not 
come too late. The Orient's a sleepy place, as all 
globe-trotters say. We'll get there soon enough, 
my lads, and carry it away. That's a good enough 
song to round the Cape with, and there's the Table 
Cloth on Table Mountain and we've drawn a bead 
over half the curving world. Three cheers for Old 
Glory, fellows. 

A Daimio's procession 

Winds between two green hills. 



CAN GRANDE S CASTLE 63 

A line of thin, sharp, shining, pointed spears 
Above red coats 

And yellow mushroom hats. ' 

A man leading an ox 
Has cast himself upon the ground. 
He rubs his forehead in the dust, 
While his ox gazes with wide, moon eyes 
At the glittering spears 
. Majestically parading 
Between two green hills. 

Down, down, down, to the bottom of the map; 
but we must up again, high on the other side. 
America, sailing the seas of a planet to stock the 
shop counters at home. Commerce-raiding a na- 
tion ; pulling apart the curtains of a temple and call- 
ing it trade. Magnificent mission ! Every shop-till 
in every bye-street will bless you. Force the shut 
gate with the muzzles of your black cannon. Then wait 



64 CAN Grande's castle 

— wait for fifty years — and see who has conquered. 
But now the Mississippi must brave the Cape, in 
a crashing of bitter seas. The wind blows East, the 
wind blows West, there is no rest under these clash- 
ing clouds. Petrel whirl by like torn newspapers 
along a street. Albatrosses fly close to the mast- 
heads. Dread purrs over this stormy ocean, and the 
smell of the water is the dead, oozing dampness of 
tombs. 

Tiger rain on the temple bridge of carved green- 
stone, 
Slanting tiger lines of rain on the lichened lanterns 

of the gateway. 
On the stone statues of mythical warriors. 
Striped rain making the bells of the pagoda 

roofs flutter. 
Tiger-footing on the bluish stones of the court-yard. 
Beating, snapping, on the cheese-rounds of open 
umbrellas, 



CAN Grande's castle 65 

Licking, tiger- tongued, over the straw mat which 

a pilgrim wears upon his shoulders, 
Gnawing, tiger-toothed, into the paper mask 
Which he carries on his back. 
Tiger-clawed rain scattering the peach-blossoms, 
Tiger tails of rain lashing furiously among the 

cryptomerias. 

"Land — O." Mauritius. Stepping-stone four. 
The coaling ships have arrived, and the shore is a 
hive of Negroes, and Malays, and Lascars, and 
Chinese. The clip and clatter of tongues is un- 
ceasing. "What awful brutes!" "Obviously, but 
the fruits they sell are good." "Food, fellows, bully 
good food." Yankee money for pine-apples, shad- 
docks, mangoes. "Wlio were Paul and Virginia.'" 
"Oh, a couple of spooneys who died here, in a ship- 
wreck, because the lady wouldn't take off her smock." 
" I say, Fred, that's a shabby way to put it. You've 



66 CAN Grande's castle 

no sentiment." "Maybe. I don't read much my- 
self, and when I do, I prefer United States, something 
like old Artemus Ward, for instance." "Oh, dry up, 
and let's get some donkeys and go for a gallop. 
We've got to begin coaling to-morrow, remember." 

The beautiful dresses. 

Blue, Green, Mauve, Yellow ; 

And the beautiful green pointed hats 

Like Chinese porcelains ! 

See, a band of geisha 

Is imitating the state procession of a Corean 

Ambassador, 
Under painted streamers, 
On an early afternoon. 

The hot sun burns the tar up out of the deck. The 
paddle-wheels turn, flinging the cupped water over 
their shoulders. Heat smoulders along the horizon. 



CAN Grande's castle 67 

The shadow of the ship floats off the starboard quar- 
ter, floats like a dark cloth upon the sea. The watch 
is pulling on the topsail halliards : 

"0 Sally Brown of New York City, 
Ay ay, roll and go." 
Like a tired beetle, the Mississippi creeps over the 
flat, glass water, creeps on, breathing heavily. Creeps 
— creeps — and sighs and settles at Pointe de Galle, 
Ceylon. 

Spice islands speckling the Spanish Main. Fairy 
tales and stolen readings. Saint Jolui's Eve ! Mid- 
summer Madness ! Here it is all true. But the 
smell of the spice-trees is not so nice as the smell of 
new-mown hay on the Commodore's field at Tarry- 
town. But what can one say to forests of rose-wood, 
satin-wood, ebony ! To the talipot tree, one leaf of 
which can cover several people with its single shade. 
Trade ! Trade ! Trade in spices for an earlier gen- 
eration. We dream of lacquers and precious stones. 



68 CAN Grande's castle 

Of spinning telegraph wires across painted fans. 
Ceylon is an old story, ours will be the glory of more 
important conquests. 

But wait — wait. No one is likely to force the 
Gate. The smoke of golden Virginia tobacco floats 
through the blue palms. "You say j'ou killed forty 
elephants with this rifle I" "Indeed, yes, and a 
trifling bag, too." 

Down the ninety-mile rapids 

Of the Heaven Dragon River, 

He came. 

With his bowmen, 

And his spearmen. 

Borne in a gilded palanquin. 

To pass the Winter in Yedo 

By the Shogun's decree. 

To pass the Winter idling in the Yoshiwara, 

While his bowmen and spearmen 



CAN Grande's castle 69 

Gamble away their rusted weapons 
Every evening 
At the Hour of the Cock. 

Her Britannic Majesty's frigate Cleopatra salutes 
the Mississippi as she sails into the harbour of 
Singapore. Vessels galore choke the wharves. From 
China, Siam, Malaya; Sumatra, Europe, America. 
This is the bargain counter of the East. Goods — 
Goods, dumped ashore to change boats and sail on 
again. Oaths and cupidity ; greasy clothes and greasy 
dollars wound into turbans. Opium and birds'-nests 
exchanged for teas, cassia, nankeens; gold thread 
bartered for Brummagem buttons. Pocket knives 
told off against teapots. Lots and lots of cheap 
damaged porcelains, and trains of silken bales await- 
ing advantageous sales to Yankee merchantmen. 
The figure-head of the Mississippi should be a 
beneficent angel. With her guns to persuade, she 



70 CAN Grande's castle 

should lay the foundation of such a market on the 
shores of Japan. "We will do what we can," writes 
the Commodore, in his cabin. 

Outside the drapery shop of Taketani Sabai, 

Strips of dyed cloth are hanging out to dry. 

Fine Arimitsu cloth. 

Fine blue and white cloth, 

Falling from a high staging, 

Falling like falling water. 

Like blue and white unbroken water 

Sliding over a high cliff. 

Like the Ono Fall on the Kisokaido Road. 

Outside the shop of Taketani Sabai, 

They have hung the fine dyed cloth 

In strips out to dry. 

Romance and heroism ; and all to make one dollar 
two. Through grey fog and fresh blue breezes. 



CAN gbande's castle 71 

through heat, and sleet, and sheeted rain. For cen- 
turies men have pursued the will-o'-the-wisp — 
trade. And they have got — what ? All civiliza- 
tion weighed in twopenny scales and fastened with 
string. A sailing planet packed in a dry-goods box. 
Knocks, and shocks, and blocks of extended knowl- 
edge, contended for and won. Cloves and nutmegs, 
and science stowed among the grains. Your gains 
are not in silver, mariners, but in the songs of violins, 
and the thin voices whispering through printed books. 

"It looks like a dinner-plate," thinks the oflScer 
of the watch, as the Mississippi sails up the muddy 
river to Canton, with the Dragon's Cave Fort on 
one side, and the Girl's Shoe Fort on the other. 

The Great Gate looms in a distant mist, and the 
anchored squadron waits and rests, but its coming is 
as certain as the equinoxes, and the lightning bolts 
of its guns are ready to tear oflf centuries like husks 
of com. 



72 CAN Grande's castle 

The Commodore sips bottled water from Saratoga, 
and makes out a report for the State Department. 
The men play pitch-and-toss, and the officers poker, 
and the betting gives heavy odds against the little 
monkey-men. 

On the floor of the reception room of the Palace 

They have laid a white quilt, 

And on the quilt, two red rugs ; 

And they have set up two screens of white paper 

To hide that which should not be seen. 

At the four corners, they have placed lanterns. 

And now they come. 

Six attendants. 

Three to sit on either side of the condemned man, 

Walking slowly. 

Three to the right. 

Three to the left, 

And he between them 



CAN Grande's castle 73 

In his dress of ceremony 
With the great wings. 

Shadow wings, thrown by the lantern Hght, 
Trail over the red rugs to the polished floor, 
Trail away unnoticed. 
For there is a sharp glitter from a dagger 
Borne past the lanterns on a silver tray. 
'O my Master, 
I would borrow your sword, 
For it may be a consolation to you 
To perish by a sword to which you are accus- 
tomed." 
Stone, the face of the condemned man, 
Stone, the face of the executioner. 
And yet before this moment 
These were master and pupil. 
Honoured and according homage. 
And this is an act of honourable devotion. 
Each face is passive, 
Hewed as out of strong stone. 



74 CAN Grande's castle 

Cold as a statue above a temple porch. 

Down slips the dress of ceremony to the girdle. 

Plunge the dagger to its hilt. 

A trickle of blood runs along the white flesh 

And soaks into the girdle silk. 

Slowly across from left to right, 

Slowly, upcutting at the end, 

But the executioner leaps to liis feet, 

Poises the sword — 

Did it flash, hover, descend ? 

There is a thud, a horrible rolling. 

And the heavy sound of a loosened, falling body. 

Then only the throbbing of blood 

Spurting into the red rugs. 

For he who was a man is that thing 

Crumpled up on the floor. 

Broken, and crushed into the red rugs. 

The friend wipes the sword. 

And his face is calm and frozen 



CAN Grande's castle 75 

As a stone statue on a Winter night 
Above a temple gateway. 

Part II 

Four vessels giving easily to the low-running waves 
and cat's-paw breezes of a Summer sea. July, 1853, 
Mid-Century, but just on the turn. Mid-Century, 
with the vanishing half fluttering behind on a foam- 
bubbled wake. Four war ships steering for the "Land 
of Great Peace," caparisoned in state, cleaving a 
jewelled ocean to a Dragon Gate. Behind it, the 
quiet of afternoon. Golden light reflecting from the 
inner sides of shut portals. War is an old wives' 
tale, a frail beautiful embroidery of other ages. The 
panoply of battle fades. Arrows rust in arsenals, 
spears stand useless on their butts in vestibules. 
Cannon lie unmounted in castle yards, and rats 
and snakes make nests in them and rear their young 
in unmolested satisfaction. 



76 CAN gkande's castle 

The sun of Mid-Summer lies over the "Land of 
Great Peace," and behind the shut gate they do not 
hear the paddle-wheels of distant vessels unceasingly 
turning and advancing, through the jewelled scintil- 
lations of the encircling sea. 

Susquehanna and Mississippi, steamers, towing 
Saratoga and Plymouth, sloops of war. Moving on 
in the very eye of the wind, with not a snip of canvas 
upon their slim yards. Fugi ! — a point above nothing, 
for there is a haze. Stop gazing, that is the bugle 
to clear decks and shot guns. We must be prepared, 
as we run up the coast straight to the Bay of Yedo. 
"I say, fellows, those boats think they can catch us, 
they don't know that this is Yankee steam." Bang ! 
The shore guns are at work. And that smoke-ball 
would be a rocket at night, but we cannot see the 
gleam in this sunshine. 

Black with people are the bluffs of Uraga, watch- 



CAN Grande's castle 77 

ing the "fire-ships," lipping windless up the bay. 
Say all the prayers you know, priests of Shinto and 
Buddha. Ah! The great splashing of the wheels 
stops, a chain rattles. The anchor drops at the Hour 
of the Ape. 

A clock on the Commodore's chest of drawers strikes 
five with a silvery tinkle. 

Boats are coming from all directions. Beautiful 
boats of unpainted wood, broad of beam, with taper- 
ing sterns, and clean runs. Swiftly they come, with 
shouting rowers standing to their oars. The shore 
glitters with spears and lacquered hats. Compactly 
the boats advance, and each carries a flag — white- 
black-white — and the stripes break and blow. But 
the tow-lines are cast loose when the rowers would 
make them fast to the "black ships," and those who 
would climb the chains slip back dismayed, checked 
by a show of cutlasses, pistols, pikes. "Nam Hodo!" 



78 CAN Grande's castle 

This is amazing, unprecedented ! Even the Vice- 
Governor, though he boards the Susquehanna, cannot 
see the Commodore. "His High Mighty Mysteri- 
ousness. Lord of the Forbidden Interior," remains in 
his cabin. Extraordinary ! Horrible ! 

Rockets rise from the forts, and their trails of 
sparks glitter faintly now, and their bombs break 
in faded colours as the sun goes down. 

Bolt the gate, monkey-men, but it is late to begin 
turning locks so rusty and worn. 

Darkness over rice-fields and hills. The Gold Gate 
hides in shadow. UiJon the indigo-dark water, mil- 
lions of white jelly-fish drift, like lotus-petals over 
an inland lake. The land buzzes with prayer, low, 
dim smoke hanging in air ; and every hill gashes and 
glares with shooting fires. The fire-bells are ringing 
in double time, and a heavy swinging boom clashes 
from the great bells of temples. Couriers lash their 



CAN Grande's castle 79 

horses, riding furiously to Yedo ; junks and scull- 
boats arrive hourly at Sliinagawa with news ; runners, 
bearing dispatches, pant in government oflSces. The 
hollow doors of the Great Gate beat with alarms. 
The charmed Dragon Country shakes and trembles, 
lyeyoshi, twelfth Shogun of the Tokugawa line, sits 
in his city. Sits in the midst of one million, two 
hundred thousand trembling souls, and his mind 
rolls forward and back like a ball on a circular run- 
wajs and finds no goal. Roll, poor distracted mind 
of a sick man. What can you do but wait, trusting 
in your Dragon Gate, for how should you know that 
it is rusted. 

But there is a sign over the "black ships." A 
wedge-shaped tail of blue sparklets, edged with red, 
trails above them as though a Dragon were pouring 
violet sulphurous spume from steaming nostrils, 
and the hulls and rigging are pale, quivering, bright 
as Taira ghosts on the sea of Nagato. 



80 CAN Grande's castle 

Up and down walk sentinels, fore and aft, and at 
the side gangways. There is a pile of round shot 
and four stands of grape beside each gun ; and car- 
bines, and pistols, and cutlasses, are laid in the boats. 
Floating arsenals — floating sample-rooms for the 
wares of a continent ; shop-counters, flanked with 
weapons, adrift among the jelly-fishes. 

Eight bells, and the meteor washes away before 
the wet, white wisps of dawn. 

Through the countrysides of the "Land of Great 
Peace," flowers are blooming. The greenish-white, 
sterile blossoms of hydrangeas boom faintly, like 
distant inaudible bombs of colour exploding in the 
woods. Weigelias prick the pink of their slender 
trumpets against green backgrounds. The fan- 
shaped leaves of ladies' slippers rustle under crypto- 
merias. 

Midsummer heat curls about the cinnamon-red 



CAN Grande's castle 81 

tree-boles along the Tokaiclo. The road ripples and 
glints with the passing to and fro, and beyond, in 
the roadstead, the "black ships" swing at their an- 
chors and wait. 

All up and down the Eastern shore of the bay is 
a feverish digging, patting, plastering. Forts to be 
built in an hour to resist the barbarians, if, perad- 
venture, they can. Japan turned to, what wUl it 
not do ! Fishermen and palanquin-bearers, pack- 
horse-leaders and farm-labourers, even women and 
children, pat and plaster. Disaster batters at the 
Dragon Gate. Batters at the doors of Yedo, where 
Samurai unpack their armour, and whet and feather 
their arrows. 

Daimios smoke innumerable pipes, and drink un- 
numbered cups of tea, discussing — discussing — 
"What is to be done.''" The Shogun is no Emperor. 
What shall they do if the "hairy devils" take a no- 
tion to go to Kioto ! Then indeed would the Toku- 



82 CAN Grande's castle 

gawa fall. The prisons are crammed with those who 
advise opening the Gate. Open the Gate, and let 
the State scatter like dust to the winds ! Absurd ! 
Unthinkable! Suppress the "brocade pictures" of 
the floating monsters with which book-sellers and 
picture-shop keepers are delighting and affrighting 
the populace. Place a ban on speech. Preach, in- 
ert Daimios — the Commodore will not go to Naga- 
saki, and the roar of his guns will drown the clatter- 
ing fall of your Dragon Doors if you do not open them 
in time. East and West, and trade shaded by hero- 
ism. Hokusai is dead, but his pupils are lampooning 
your carpet soldiers. Spare the dynasty — parley, 
procrastinate. Appoint two Princes to receive the 
Commodore, at once, since he will not wait over 
long. At Kurihama, for he must not come to Yedo. 

Flip — flap — flutter — flags in front of the Con- 
ference House. Built over night, it seems, with un- 



CAN GRANDE S CASTLE 83 

painted peaked summits of roofs gleaming like ricks 
of grain. Flip — flutter — flap — variously-tinted 
flags, in a crescent about nine tall standards whose 
long scarlet pennons brush the ground. Beat — 
tap — fill and relapse — the wind pushing against 
taut white cloth screens, bellying out the Shogun's 
crest of heart-shaped Asarum leaves in the panels, 
crumpling them to indefinite figures of scarlet spot- 
ting white. Flip — ripple — brighten — over serried 
ranks of soldiers on the beach. Sword-bearers, 
spear-bearers, archers, lancers, and those who carry 
heavy, antiquated matchlocks. The block of them 
five thousand armed men, drawn up in front of a 
cracking golden door. But behind their bristling 
spears, the cracks are hidden. 

Braying, blasting blares from two brass bands, 
approaching in glittering boats over glittering water. 
One is playing the "Ov^erture" from "William Tell," 
the other, "The Last Rose of Summer," and the way 



84 CAN Grande's castle 

the notes clash, and shock, and shatter, and dissolve, 
is wonderful to hear. Queer barbarian music, and the 
monkey-soldiers stand stock still, listening to its 
reverberation humming in the folded doors of the 
Great Gate. 

Stuff your ears, monkey-soldiers, screw your 
faces, shudder up and down your spines. Cannon ! 
Cannon! from one of the "black ships." Thirteen 
thudding explosions, thirteen red dragon tongues, 
thirteen clouds of smoke like the breath of the moun- 
tain gods. Thirteen hammer strokes shaking the 
Great Gate, and the seams in the metal widen. Open 
Sesame, shotless guns; and "The Only, High, Grand 
and Mighty, Invisible Mysteriousness, Chief Bar- 
barian" reveals himself, and steps into his barge. 

Up, oars, down ; drip — sun-spray — rowlock- 
rattle. To shore ! To shore ! Set foot upon the 
sacred soil of the "Land of Great Peace," with its 
five thousand armed men doing nothing with their 



CAN Grande's castle 85 

spears and matchlocks, because of the genii in the 
black guns aboard the "black ships." 

One hundred marines in a line up the wharf. One 
hundred sailors, man to man, opposite them. Offi- 
cers, two deep ; and, up the centre — the Proces- 
sion. Bands together now: "Hail Columbia." 
Marines in file, sailors after, a staff with the American 
flag borne by seamen, another with the Commodore's 
broad pennant. Two boys, dressed for ceremony, 
carrying the President's letter and credentials in 
golden boxes. Tall, blue-black negroes on either 
side of — The Commodore ! Walking slowly, gold, 
blue, steel-glitter, up to the Conference House, walk- 
ing in state up to an ancient tottering Gate, lately 
closed securely, but now gaping. Bands, rain your 
music against this golden barrier, harry the ears of 
the monkey-men. The doors are ajar, and the 
Commodore has entered. 



86 CAN Grande's castle 

Prince of Idzu — Prince of Iwami — in winged 
dresses of gold brocade, at the end of a red carpet, 
under violet, silken hangings, under crests of scarlet 
heart-shaped Asarum leaves, guardians of a scarlet 
lacquered box, guardians of golden doors, worn thin 
and bending. 

In silence the blue-black negroes advance and take 
the golden boxes from the page boys ; in silence they 
open them and unwrap blue velvet coverings. Si- 
lently they display the documents to the Prince of 
Idzu — the Prince of Iwami — motionless, inscru- 
table — beyond the red carpet. 

The vellum crackles as it is unfolded, and the long 
silk-gold cords of the seals drop their gold tassels to 
straight glistening inches and swing slowly — gold 
tassels clock-ticking before a doomed, burnished gate. 

The negroes lay the vellum documents upon the 



CAN Grande's castle 87 

scarlet lacquered box ; bow, and retire. 

"I am desirous that our two countries should trade 
with each other." Careful letters, carefully traced 
on rich parchment, and the low sun casts the shadow 
of the Gate far inland over high hills. 

"The letter of the President of the United States 
will be delivered to the Emperor. Therefore you can 
now go." 

The Commodore, rising: "I will return for the 
answer during the coming Spring." 

But ships are frail, and seas are fickle, one can nail 
fresh plating over the thin gate before Spring. Prince 
of Idzu — Prince of Iwami — inscrutable statesmen, 
insensate idiots, trusting blithely to a lock when the 
key-guns are trained even now upon it. 

Withdraw, Procession. Dip oars back to the "black 
ships." Slip cables and depart, for day after 



88 CAN Grande's castle 

day will lapse and nothing can retard a coming 

Spring. 

Panic Winter throughout the "Land of Great 
Peace." Panic, and haste, wasting energies and ac- 
complishing nothing. Kioto has heard, and prays, 
trembling. Priests at the shrine of Ise whine long, 
slow supplications from dawn to dawn, and through 
days dropping down again from morning. lyeyoshi 
is dead, and lyesada rules in Yedo; thirteenth Sho- 
gun of the Tokugawa. Rules and struggles, rescinds 
laws, urges reforms ; breatliless, agitated endeavours 
to patch and polish where is only corroding and 
puffed particles of dust. 

It is Winter still in the Bay of Yedo, though the 
plum-trees of Kamata and Kinagawa are white and 
fluttering. 

Winter, with green, high, angular seas. But over 
the water, far toward China, are burning the furnaces 



CAN" Grande's castle 89 

of three great steamers, and four sailing vessels heel 
over, with decks slanted and sails full and pulling. 

"There's a bit of a lop, this morning. Mr. Jones, 
you'd better take in those royals." 

"Ay, ay, Sir. Tumble up here, men ! Tumble up ! 
Lay aloft and stow royals. Haul out to leeward." 
"To my. 
Ay, 
And we'll /wrZ 

Ay, 
And pay Paddy Doyle for his boots." 
"Taut band — knot away," 

Chug ! Chug ! go the wheels of the consorts, salt- 
ing smoke-stacks with whirled spray. 

The Commodore lights a cigar, and paces up and 
down the quarter-deck of the Powhatan. "I wonder 
what the old yellow devils will do," he muses. 

Forty feet high, the camellia trees, with hard, green 



90 CAN Grande's castle 

buds unburst. It is early yet for camellias, and the 
green buds and the glazed green leaves toss franti- 
cally in a blustering March wind. Sheltered behind 
the forty feet high camellia trees, on the hills of Idzu, 
stand watchmen straining their eyes over a broken 
dazzle of sea. 

Just at the edge of moonlight and sunlight — moon 
setting ; sun rising — they come. Seven war ships 
heeled over and flashing, dashing through heaped 
waves, sleeping a moment in hollows, leaping over 
ridges, sweeping forward in a strain of canvas and 
a train of red-black smoke. 

"The fire-ships ! The fire-ships !" 

Slip the bridles of your horses, messengers, and clat- 
ter down the Tokaido ; scatter pedestrians, palan- 
quins, slow moving cattle, right and left into the 
cryptomerias ; rattle over bridges, spatter dust into 
shop-windows. To Yedo ! To Yedo ! For Spring 
is here, and the fire-ships have come ! 



CAN Grande's castle 91 

Seven vessels, flying the stars and stripes, three 
more shortly to join them, with ripe, fruit-bearing 
guns pointed inland. 

Princes evince doubt, distrust. Learning must 
beat learning. Appoint a Professor of the Univer- 
sity. Delay, prevaricate. How long can the play 
continue.'' Hayashi, learned scholar of Confucius 
and Mencius — he shall confer with the barbarians 
at Uraga. Shall he ! Word comes that the Mighty 
Chief of Sliips will not go to Uraga. Steam is up, 
and — Horror ! Consternation ! The squadron moves 
toward Yedo ! Sailors, midshipmen, lieutenants, pack 
yards and cross-trees, seemg temple gates, castle 
towers, flowered pagodas, and look-outs looming dis- 
tantly clear, and the Commodore on deck can hear 
the slow booming of the beUs from the temples of 
Shiba and Asakusa. 

You must capitulate, great Princes of a quivering 



92 CAN GRANDE S CASTLE 

gate. Say Yokohama, and the Commodore will agree, 
for they must not come to Yedo. 

Rows of japonicas in full bloom outside the Con- 
ference House. Flags, and streamers, and musicians, 
and pikemen. Five hundred officers, seamen, ma- 
rines, and the Commodore following in his white- 
painted gig. A jig of fortune indeed, with a sailor 
and a professor manoeuvring for terms, chess-playing 
each other in a game of future centuries. 

The Americans bring presents. Presents now, to 
be bought hereafter. Good will, to head long bills of 
imports. Occidental mechanisms to push the Orient 
into limbo. Fox-moves of interpreters, and Pan- 
dora's box with a contents rated far too low. 

Roimd and round goes the little train on its cir- 
cular railroad, at twenty miles an hour, with grave 
dignitaries seated on its roof. Smiles, gestures, at 
mvvsages running over wire, a mile away. Touch 



CAN gbande's castle 93 

the harrows, the ploughs, the flails, and shudder at 
the "spirit pictures" of the daguerreotype machine. 
These Barbarians have harnessed gods and dragons. 
They build boats which wUl not sink, and tinker little 
gold wheels till they follow the swinging of the sun. 

Run to the Conference House. See, feel, listen. 
And shrug deprecating shoulders at the glisten of silk 
and lacquer given in return. What are cups cut out 
of conch-shells, and red-dyed figured crepe, to rail- 
roads, and burning engines ! 

Go on board the "black ships" and drink mint 
juleps and brandy smashes, and click your tongues 
over sweet puddings. Offer the strangers pickled 
plums, sugared fruits, candied walnuts. Bruit the 
news far inland through the moutlis of countrymen.' 
Who thinks of the Great Gate ! Its portals are 
pushed so far back that the shining edges of them 
can scarcely be observed. The Commodore has 
never swerved a moment from his purpose, and the 



94 CAN Grande's castle 

dragon mouths of his guns have conquered without 

the need of a single powder-horn. 

The Commodore writes in his cabin. Writes an 
account of what he has done. 

The sands of centuries run fast, one slides, and 
another, each falling into a smother of dust. 

A locomotive in pay for a Whistler; telegraph 
wires buying a revolution ; weights and measures 
and Audubon's birds in exchange for fear. Yellow 
monkey-men leaping out of Pandora's box, shaking 
the rocks of the Western coastline. Golden Cali- 
fornia bartering panic for prints. The dressing- 
gowns of a continent won at the cost of security. 
Artists and philosophers lost in the hour-glass sand 
pouring through an open Gate. 

Ten ships sailing for China on a fair May wind. 
Ten ships sailing from one world into another, but 



CAN Grande's castle 95 

never again into the one they left. Two years and a 
tip-turn is accomplished. Over the globe and back. 
Rip Van Winkle ships. Slip into your docks in New- 
port, in Norfolk, in Charlestown. You have blown off 
the locks of the East, and what is coming will come. 

POSTLTJDE 

In the Castle moat, lotus flowers are blooming, 
They shine with the light of an early moon 
Brightening above the Castle towers. 
They shine in the dark circles of their unreflect- 
ing leaves. 
Pale blossoms. 
Pale towers, 
Pale moon, 

Deserted ancient moat 
About an ancient stronghold. 
Your bowmen are departed. 
Your strong walls are silent. 



96 CAN Grande's castle 

Their only echo 
A croaking of frogs. 
Frogs croaking at the moon 
In the ancient moat 
Of an ancient, crumbling Castle. 

1903. Japan 
The high cliff of the Kegon waterfall, and a young 
man carving words on the trunk of a tree. He 
finishes, pauses an instant, and then leaps into the 
foam-cloud rising from below. But, on the tree- 
trunk, the newly-cut words blaze white and hard as 
though set with diamonds : 

^ "How mightily and steadily go Heaven and Earth ! 
How infinite the duration of Past and Present ! Try 
to measure this vastness with five feet. A word- 
explains the Truth of the whole Universe — unknow- 
able. To cure my agony I have decided to die. 
Now, as I stand on the crest of this rock, no un- 



CAN grande's castle 97 

easiness is left in me. For the first time I know that 
extreme pessimism and extreme optimism are one." 

1903. America 
"Nocturne — Blue and Silver — Battersea Bridge. 
Nocturne — Grey and Silver — Chelsea Embank- 
ment. 

Variations in Violet and Green." 
Pictures in a glass-roofed gallery, and all day long 
the throng of people is so great that one can scarcely 
see them. Debits — credits ? Flux and flow through 
a wide gateway. Occident — Orient — after fifty 
years. 



HEDGE ISLAND 



HEDGE ISLAND 

A Retrospect and a Prophecy 

Hedges of England, peppered with sloes; hedges 
of England, rows and rows of thorn and brier ray- 
ing out from the fire where London burns with its 
steaming lights, throwing a glare on the sky o' nights. 
Hedges of England, road after road, lane after lane, 
and on again to the sea at the North, to the sea at 
the East, blackberry hedges, and man and beast 
plod and trot and gallop between hedges of Eng- 
land, clipped and clean ; beech, and laurel, and 
hornbeam, and yew, wheels whirl under, and circle 
through, tunnels of green to the sea at the South; 
wind-blown hedges to mark the mouth of Thames 
or Humber, the Western rim. Star-point hedges, 
smooth and trim. 



102 CAN Grande's castle 

Star-point indeed, with all His Majesty's mails agog 
every night for the provinces. Twenty-seven fine 
crimson coaches drawn up in double file in Lombard 
Street. Great gold-starred coaches, blazing with 
royal insignia, waiting in line at the Post-OflSce. 
Eight of a Summer's evening, and the sun only 
just gone down. "Lincoln," "Winchester," "Ports- 
mouth," shouted from the Post-Ofiice steps; and 
the Portsmouth chestnuts come up to the collar 
with a jolt, and stop again, dancing, as the bags are 
hoisted up. "Gloucester," "Oxford," "Bristol," 
"York," "Norwich." Rein in those bays of the 
Norwich team, they shy badly at the fan-gleam of 
the lamp over the Post-Office door. "All in. No 
more." The stones of St. Martin's-le-Grand sparkle 
under the slap of iron shoes. Off you go, bays, and 
the greys of the Dover mail start forward, twitch- 



CAN Grande's castle 103 

ing, hitching, champing, stamping, their little feet 
pat the ground in patterns and their bits fleck foam. 
"Whoa! Steady!" with a rush they are gone. 
But Glasgow is ready with a team of piebalds and 
sorrels, driven chess-board fashion. Bang down, 
lids of mail-boxes — thunder-lids, making the horses 
start. They part and pull, push each other side- 
ways, sprawl on the slippery pavement, and gather 
wave-like and crashing to a leap. Spicey tits those ! 
Tootle-too ! A nice calculation for the gate, not a 
minute to spare, with the wheelers well up in the bit 
and the leaders carrying bar. Forty-two hours to 
Scotland, and we have a coachman who keeps his 
horses like clock-work. Whips flick, buckles click, 
and wheels turn faster and faster till the spokes 
blur. "Sound your horn, Walter." Make it echo 
back and forth from the fronts of houses. Good- 
night, London, we are carrying the mails to the 
North. Big, burning light which is London, we dip 



104 CAN Grande's castle 

over Highgate hill and leave you. The air is steady, 
the night is bright, the roads are firm. The wheels 
hum like a gigantic spinning-jenny. Up North, 
where the hedges bloom with roses. Through Whet- 
stone Gate to Alconbury Hill. Stop at the Wheat- 
sheaf one minute for the change. They always 
have an eye open here, it takes thirty seconds to 
drink a pot of beer, even the post-boys sleep in their 
spurs. The wheels purr over the gravel. "Give 
the off-hand leader a cut on the cheek." Whip ! 
Whew ! This is the first night of three. Three 
nights to Glasgow ; hedges — hedges — shoot and 
flow. Eleven miles an hour, and the hedges are 
showered with glow-worms. The hedges and the 
glow-worms are very still, but we make a prodigious 
clatter. What does it matter? It is good for these 
yokels to be waked up. Tootle-toot ! The diamond- 
paned lattice of a cottage flies open. Post-office 
here. Throw them on their haunches. Bag up — 



CAN Grande's castle 105 

bag down — and the village has grown indistinct be- 
hind. The old moon is racing us, she slices through 
trees like a knife through cheese. Distant clocks 
strike midnight. The coach rocks — this is a gal- 
loping stage. We have a roan near-wheel and a 
grey off -wheel and our leaders are chestnuts, "quick 
as light, clever as cats." 

The sickle-flame of our lamps cuts past sequences 
of trees and well-plashed quickset hedges — hedges 
of England, long shafts of the nimbus of London. 
Hurdles here and there. Park palings. Reflections 
in windows. On — on — through the night to the 
North. Over stretched roads, with a soft, con- 
tinuous motion like slipping water. Nights and 
days unwinding down long roads. 

In the green dawn, spires and bell-towers start up 
and stare at us. Hoary old woods nod and beckon. 
A castle turret glitters through trees. There is a 
perfume of wild-rose and honey-bine, twining in the 



106 CAN Grande's castle 

hedges — Northerly hedges, sliding away behind us. 
The pole-chains tinkle tunes and play a saraband 
with sheep-bells beyond the hedges. Wedges of 
fields — square, flat, slatted green with corn, purple 
with cabbages. The stable clocks of Gayhurst and 
Tyringham chime from either side of the road. The 
Ouse twinldes blue among smooth meadows. Go ! 
Go ! News of the World ! Perhaps a victory ! the 
"Nile" or "Salamanca"! Perhaps a proclamation, 
or a fall in the rate of consols. Whatever it is, the 
hedges of England hear it first. Hear it, and flick 
and flutter their leaves, and catch the dust of it on 
their shining backs. Bear it over the dumpling 
hills and the hump-backed bridges. Start it down 
the rivers : Eden, Eshe, Sark, Milk, Driff, and Clyde. 
Shout it to the sculptured corbels of old churches. 
Lurch round corners with it, and stop with a snap 
before the claret-coloured brick front of the Bell 
at Derby, and call it to the ostler as he nms out with 



CAN Grande's castle 107 

fresh horses. The twenty Corinthian columns of 
pale primrose alabaster at Keddleston Hall tremble 
with its importance. Even the runaway couples 
bound for Gretna Green cheer and wave. Laurels, 
and ribbons, and a red flag on our roof. "Wellesley 
forever !" 

Dust dims the hedges. A light travelling chariot 
running sixteen miles an hour with four blood mares 
doing their bravest. Whip, bound, and cut again. 
Loose rein, quick spur. He stands up in the chariot 
and shakes a bag full of broad guineas, you can hear 
them — clinking, chinking — even above the roar 
of wheels. " Go it ! Go it ! We are getting away 
from them. Fifty guineas to each of you if we get 
there in time." Quietly wait, grey hedges, it will 
all happen again : quick whip, spur, strain. Two 
purple-faced gentlemen in another chariot, black 
geldings smoking hot, blood and froth flipped over 



108 CAN Grande's castle 

the hedges. They hail the coach : "How far ahead? 
Can we catch them ? " " Ten minutes gone by. Not 
more." The post-boys wale their lunging horses. 
Rattle, reel, and plunge. 

But the runaways have Jack Ainslee from the 
Bush, Carlisle. He rides in a yellow jacket, and 
he knows every by-lane and wood between here and 
the border. In an hour he will have them at Gretna, 
and to-night the lady will write to her family at 
Doncaster, and the down mail will carry the letter, 
with tenpence halfpenny to pay for news that no- 
body wishes to hear. 

"Buy a pottle of plums. Good Sir." "Cherries, 
fine, ripe cherries O." Get your plums and cherries, 
and hurry into the White Horse Cellar for a last 
rum and milk. You are a poet, bound to Dover 
over Westminster Bridge. Ah, well, all the same. 
You are an Essex farmer, grown fat by selling your 



CAN Grande's castle 109 

peas at Covent Garden Market at four guineas a 
pint. Certainly ; as you please. You are a pre- 
bend of Exeter or Wells, timing your journey to the 
Cathedral Close. If you choose. You are a Co- 
rinthian Buck going down to Brighton by the Age 
which runs "with a fury," Mercury on a box seat. 
Get up, beavers and top-boots. Shoot the last 
parcel in. Now — "Let 'em go. I have 'em." That 
was a jerk, but the coachman lets fly his whip and 
quirks his off-wheeler on the thigh. Out and under 
the archway of the coach-yard, with the guard play- 
ing "Sally in our Alley" on his key-bugle. White 
with sun, the streets of London. Cloud-shadows 
run ahead of us along the streets. Morning. Sum- 
mer. England. " Have a light. Sir ? Tobacco tastes 
well in this fresh air." 

Hedges of England, how many wheels spatter you 
in a day.'' How many coaches roll between you on 



110 CAN Grande's castle 

their star-point way? What rainbow colours slide 
past you with the fluency of water ? Crimson mails 
rumble and glide the night through, but the Cam- 
bridge Telegraph is a brilliant blue. The Bull and 
Mouth coaches are buttercup yellow, those of the 
Bull are painted red, while the Bell and Crown 
sports a dark maroon with light red wheels. They 
whirl by in a flurry of dust and colours. Soon 
all this will drop asunder like the broken glass of 
a kaleidoscope. Hedges, you will see other pic- 
tures. New colours will flow beside you. New 
shapes will intersect you. Tut ! Tut ! Have you 
not hawthorn blossoms and the hips and haws 
of roses? 

Trundle between your sharp-shorn hedges, old 
Tally-hoes, and Comets, and Regents. Stop at the 
George, and turn with a flourish into the yard, 
where a strapper is washing a mud-splashed chaise, 



CAN Grande's castle 111 

and the horsekeeper is putting a "point" on that 
best whip of yours. "Coach stops here half an 
hour, Gentlemen : dinner quite ready." A long 
oak corridor. Then a burst of sunshine throu'^h 
leaded windows, spangling a floor, iris-tinting rounds 
of beef, and flaked veal pies, and rose-marbled hams, 
and great succulent cheeses. Wine-glasses take it 
and break it, and it quivers away over the table-cloth 
in faint rainbows ; or, straight and sudden, stamps 
a startling silver whorl on the polished side of a 
teapot of hot bohea. A tortoise-shell cat naps be- 
tween red geraniums, and myrtle sprigs tap the stuc- 
coed wall, gently blowing to and fro. 

Ah, hedges of England, have you led to this ? Do 
you always conduct to galleried inns, snug bars, 
beds hung with flowered chintz, sheets smelling of 
lavender ? 

What of the target practice ofif Spithead ? What 
of the rocking seventy-fours, flocking like gulls about 



112 CAN Grande's castle 

the harbour entrances? Hedges of England, can 
they root you in the sea ? 

. Your leaves rustle to the quick breeze of wheels 
incessantly turning. This island might be a tread- 
mill kept floating right side up by galloping hoofs. 

Gabled roofs of Green Dragons, and Catherine 
Wheels, and Crowns, ivy-covered walls, cool cellars 
holding bins and bins of old port, and claret, and 
burgundy. You cannot hear the din of passing 
chaises, underground, there is only the sound of 
beer running into a jug as the landlord turns the 
spiggot of a barrel. Green sponge of England, your 
heart is red with wine. "Fine spirits and brandies." 
Ha ! Ha ! Good old England, drinking, blinking, 
dreading new ideas. Queer, bluff, burly England. 
You have Nelsons, and Wellesleys, and Tom Cribbs, 
but you have also Wordsworths and Romneys, and 
(a whisper in your ear) Arkwrights and Stevensons. 



CAN Grande's castle 113 

"Time's up, Gentlemen ; take your places, please !" 
The horn rings out, the bars rattle, the horses sidle 
and paw and swing; swish — clip — with the long 
whip, and away to the hedges again. The high, border- 
ing hedges, leading to Salisbury, and Bath, and Exeter. 

Christmas weather with a hard frost. Hips 
and haws sparkle in the hedges, garnets and car- 
nelians scattered on green baize. The edges of the 
coachman's hat are notched with icicles. The horses 
slip on the frozen roads. Loads are heavy at this 
time of year, with rabbits and pheasants tied under 
the coach, but it is all hearty Christmas cheer, rush- 
ing between the hedges to get there in time for the 
plum-pudding. Old England forever ! And coach- 
horns, and waits, and Cathedral organs hail the Star 
of Bethlehem. 

But our star, our London, gutters with fog. The 



114 CAN Grande's castle 

Thames rolls like smoke under charcoal. The dome 
of St. Paul's is gone, so is the spire of St. Martin's- 
in-the-Fields, only the fires of torches are brisk and 
tossing. Tossing torches ; tossing heads of horses. 
Eight mails following each other out of London by 
torchlight. Scarcely can we see the red flare of the 
horn lantern in the hand of the ostler at the Pea- 
cock, but his voice blocks squarely into the fog : 
" Y^ or k Highflyer,'' "Leeds Union," " Stamford Regent " 
Coach lamps stream and stare, and key-bugles play 
fugues with each other; "Oh, Dear, What Can the 
Matter Be?" and "The Flaxen Headed Plough-boy " 
canon and catch as the maUs take the road. There 
will be no "springing" the horses over the "hos- 
pital ground" on a day like this; we cannot make 
more than three miles an hour in such a fog. 
Hedges of England, you are only ledges from which 
water drips back to the sea. The rain is so heavy 
the coach sways. There will be floods farther on. 



CAN Grande's castle 115 

Floods over the river Mole, with apples, and trees, 
and hurdles floating. Have a care with your leaders 
there, they have lost the road, and the wheelers have 
toppled into a ditch of swirling, curling water. The 
wheelers flounder and squeal and drown, but the 
coach is hung up on the stump of a willow-tree, and 
the passengers have only a broken leg or two among 
them. 

Double thong your team, Coachman, that creak- 
ing gibbet on the top of Hindhead is an awesome 
sight at the fall of night, with the wind roaring and 
squeaking over the heather. The murder, they say, 
was done at this spot. Give it to them on the flank, 
good and hot. "Lord, I wish I had a nip of cherry- 
brandy." "Wliat was that; down in the bowl!" 
"Drop my arm. Damn you! or you will roll the 
coach over!" Teeth chatter, bony castanets — 
click — click — to a ghastly tune, click — click — on 



116 CAN Grande's castle 

the gallows-tree, where it blows so windily. Blows 
the caged bones all about, one or two of them have 
dropped out. The up coach will see them lying on 
the ground like snow-flakes to-morrow. But we 
shall be floundering in a drift, and shifting the mail- 
bags to one of the horses so that the guard can carry 
them on. 

Hedges of England, smothered in snow. Hedges 
of England, row after row, flat and obliterate down 
to the sea ; but the chains are choked on the gallows- 
tree. Round about England the toothed waves 
snarl, gnarling her cliffs of chalk and marl. Crabbed 
England, consuming beef and pudding, and pouring 
down magnums of port, to cheat the elements. Go 
it, England, you will beat Bonaparte yet. What 
have you to do with ideas ! You have Bishops, and 
Squires, and Manor-houses, and — rum. 

London shakes with bells. Loud, bright bells 



CAN Grande's castle 117 

clashing over roofs and steeples, exploding in the 
sunlight with the brilliance of rockets. Every clock- 
tower drips a tune. The people are merry-making, 
for this is the King's Birthday and the mails parade 
this afternoon. 

"Messrs. Vidler and Parrat request the pleasure 
of Mr. Chaplin's company on Thursday the twenty- 
eighth of May, to a cold collation at three o'clock 
and to see the Procession of the Mails." 

What a magnificent spectacle ! A coil of coaches 
progressing round and round Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
Sun-mottled harness, gold and scarlet guards, horns 
throwing ofl sprays of light and music. Liverpool, 
Manchester — blacks and greys ; Bristol, Devonport 
— satin bays ; Holyhead — chestnuts ; Halifax — 
roans, blue-specked, rose-specked . . . On their box- 
seat thrones sit the mighty coachmen, twisting their 
horses this way and that with a turn of the wrist. 
These are the spokes of a wheeling sun, these are the 



118 CAN Grande's castle 

rays of London's aureole. This is her star-fire, re- 
duced by a prism to separate sparks. Cheer, good 
people ! Chuck up your hats, and buy violets to 
pin in your coats. You shall see it all to-night, when 
the King's arms shine in lamps from every house- 
front, and the mails, done parading, crack their whips 
and depart. England forever ! Hurrah ! 

England forever — going to the Prize Fight on 
Copthorne Common. England forever, with a blue 
coat and scarlet lining hanging over the back of the 
tilbury. England driving a gig and one horse ; Eng- 
land set up with a curricle and two. England in 
donkey-carts and coaches. England swearing, push- 
ing, drinking, happy, off to see the "Game Chicken" 
punch the "Nonpareil's" face to a black-and-blue 
jelly. Good old England, drunk as a lord, cursing 
the turn-pike men. Your hedges will be a nest of 
broken bottles before night, and clouds of dust will 



CAN Grande's castle 119 

quench the perfume of your flowers. I bet you three 
bulls to a tanner you can't smell a rose for a week. 

They've got the soldiers out farther along. "Damn 
the soldiers ! Drive through them, Watson." A 
fine, manly business ; are we slaves .'' " Britons never 
— never ;^ — " Waves lap the shores of England, 
wav.s like watchdogs growling; and long hedges 
bind her like a bundle. Sit safe, England, trussed 
and knotted ; while your strings hold, all will be 
well. 

But in the distance there is a pufiP of steam. Just 
a puff, but it will do. Post-boys, coachmen, guards, 
chaises, melt like meadow rime before the sun. 

You spun your webs over England, hedge to hedge. 
You kept England bound together by your spinning 
wheels. But it is gone. They have driven a wedge 
of iron into your heart. They have dried up the 
sea, and made pathways in the swimming air. They 



120 CAN Grande's castle 

have tapped the barrels in your cellars and your 
throats are parched and bleeding. But still the 
hedges blow for the Spring, and dusty soldiers smell 
your roses as they tramp to Aldershot or Dorchester. 
England forever ! Star-pointed and shining. Fling- 
ing her hedges out and asunder to embrace the 
world. 



THE BRONZE HORSES 



THE BRONZE HORSES 

Elements 

Earth, Air, Water, and Fire I Earth beneath, Air 
encompassing. Water within its boundaries. But Fire 
is nothing, comes from nothing, goes nowhither. Fire 
leaps forth and dies, yet is everything sprung out of Fire. 

The flame grows and drops away, and where it stood 
is vapour, and where was the vapour is sioift revolution, 
and where was the revolution is spinning resistance, and 
where the resistance endured is crystallization. Fire 
melts, and the absence of Fire cools and freezes. So are 
metals fused in twisted flames and take on a form other 
than that they have known, and this new form shall be 
to them rebirth and making. For in it they will stand 
upon the Earth, and in it they vnll defy the Air, and in it 
they will suffer the Water. 



124 CAN Grande's castle 

But Fire, coming again, the substance changes and is 
transformed. Therefore are things known only between 
burning and burning. The quickly consumed more 
swiftly vanish, yet all must feel the heat of the flame 
which waits in obscurity, knovnng its own time and 
what work it has to do. 

Rome 

The blue sky of Italy; the blue sky of Rome. 
Sunlight pouring white and clear from the wide- 
stretched sky. Sunlight sliding softly over white 
marble, lying in jasmine circles before cool porticoes, 
striking sharply upon roofs and domes, recoiling be- 
fore straight fagades of grey granite, foiled and beaten 
by the deep halls of temples. 

Sunlight on tiles and tufa, sunlight on basalt and 
porphyry. The sky stripes Rome with sun and 
shadow; strips of yellow, strips of blue, pepper-dots 
of purple and orange. It whip-lashes the four great 



CAN Grande's castle 125 

horses of gilded bronze, harnessed to the bronze 
quadriga on the Arch of Nero, and they trot slowly 
forward without moving. The horses tread the 
marbles of Rome beneath their feet. Their golden 
flanks quiver in the sunlight. One foot paws the 
air. A step, and they will lance into the air. Pegasus- 
like, stepping the wind. But they do not take the 
step. They wait — poised, treading Rome as they 
trod Alexandria, as they trod the narrow Island of 
Cos. The spokes of the quadriga wheels flash, but 
they do not turn. They burn like day-stars above 
the Arch of Nero. The horses poise over Rome, a con- 
stellation of morning, triumphant above Emperors, 
proud, indifferent, enduring, relentlessly spurning the 
hot dust of Rome. Hot dust clouds up about them, 
but not one particle sticks to their gilded manes. Dust 
is nothing, a mere smoke of disappearing hours. Slowly 
they trot forward without moving, and time passes 
and passes them, brushing along their sides like wind. 



126 CAN Grande's castle 

People go and come in the streets of Rome, shuffling 
over the basalt paving-stones in their high latcheted 
sandals. White and purple, like the white sun and 
the purple shadows, the senators pass, followed by a 
crowd of slaves. Waves of brown-coated populace 
efface themselves before a litter, carried by eight 
Cappadocians in light-red tunics ; as it moves along, 
there is the flicker of a violet stola and the blowing 
edge of a palla of sky-white blue. A lady, going to 
the bath to lie for an hour in the crimson and wine- 
red reflections of a marble chamber, to glide over a 
floor of green and white stones into a Carraran basin, 
where the green and blue water will cover her rose 
and blue- veined flesh with a slipping veil. Aqua 
Claudia, Aqua Virgo, Aqua Marcia, drawn from the 
hills to lie against a woman's body. Her breasts 
round hollows for themselves in the sky-green water, 
her fingers sift the pale water and drop it from 



CAN Grande's castle 127 

her as a lark drops notes backwards into the sky. 
The lady lies against the lipping water, supine and 
indolent, a pomegranate, a passion-flower, a silver- 
flamed lily, lapped, slapped, lulled, by the ripples 
which stir under her faintly moving hands. 

Later, beneath a painting of twelve dancing girls 
upon a gold ground, the slaves wUl anoint her with 
cassia, or nakte, or spikenard, or balsam, and she 
will go home in the swaying litter to eat the tongues 
of red flamingoes, and drink honey-wine flavoured 
with far-smelling mint. 

Legionaries ravish Egypt for her entertainment ; 
they bring her roses from Alexandria at a cost of 
thirty thousand pounds. Yet she would rather be 
at Baise, one is so restricted in one's pleasures in 
Rome ! The games are not until next week, and her 
favourite gladiator, Naxos, is in training just now, 
therefore time drags. The lady lags over her quail 



128 CAN Grande's castle 

and peacocks' eggs. How dull it is. White, and blue, 

and stupid. Rome ! 

Smoke flutters and veers from the top of the Tem- 
ple of Vesta. Altar smoke winding up to the gilded 
horses as they tread above Rome. Below — laugh- 
ing, jangling, pushing and rushing. Two carts are 
jammed at a street corner, and the oaths of the 
drivers mingle, and snap, and corrode, like hot fused 
metal, one against another. They hiss and sputter, 
making a confused chord through which the squeal 
of a derrick winding up a granite slab pierces, shrill 
and nervous, a sharp boring sound, shoring through 
the wide, white light of the Roman sky. People 
are selling things : matches, broken glass, peas, 
sausages, cakes. A string of donkeys, with panniers 
loaded with red asparagus and pale-green rue, minces 
past the derrick, the donkeys squeeze, one by one, 
with little patting feet, between the derrick and the 



CAN gbande's castle 129 

choked crossing. "Hey! Gallus, have you heard 
that Csesar has paid a million sestertii for a Murrhine 
vase. It is green and white, flaked like a Spring 
onion, and has the head of Minerva cut in it, sharp 
as a signet." "And who has a better right indeed, 
now that Titus has conquered Judea. He will be 
here next week, they say, and then we shall have a 
triumph worth looking at." "Famous indeed! We 
need something. It's been abominably monotonous 
lately. Why, there was not enough blood spilled in 
the games last week to give one the least appetite. 
I'm damned stale, for one." 

Still, over Rome, the white sun sails the blue, 
stretching sky, casting orange and purple striae 
down upon the marble city, cool and majestic, be- 
tween cool hills, white and omnipotent, dying of 
languor, amusing herself for a moment with the little 
boats floating up the Tiber bringing the good grain 
of Carthage, then relaxed and falling as water falls. 



130 CAN Grande's castle 

dropping into the bath. Weak as water; without 
contour as water ; colourless as water ; Rome bathes, 
and relaxes, and melts. Fluid and fluctuating, a 
liquid city pouring itself back into the streams of 
the earth. And above, on the Arch of Nero, hard, 
metallic, firm, cold, and permanent, the bronze 
horses trot slowly, not moving, and the moon casts 
the fine-edged shadow of them down upon the pav- 
ing-stones. 

Hills of the city : Pincian, Esquiline, Carlian, 
Aventine, the crimson tip of the sun burns against 
you, and you start into sudden clearness and glow red, 
red-gold, saffron, gradually diminishing to an outline 
of blue. The sun mounts over Rome, and the Arch 
of Augustus glitters like a cleft pomegranate ; the 
Temples of Julius Caesar, Castor, and Saturn, turn 
carbuncle, and rose, and diamond. Columns divide 
into double edges of flash and shadow ; domes glare, 



CAN Grande's castle 131 

inverted beryls hanging over arrested scintillations. 
The fountains flake and fringe with the scatter of 
the sun. The mosaic floors of atriums are no longer 
stone, but variegated fire ; higher, on the walls, the 
pictures painted in the white earth of Melos, the 
red earth of Sinope, the yellow ochre of Attica, erupt 
into flame. The legs of satyrs jerk with desire, the 
dancers whirl in torch-bright involutions. Grapes 
split and burst, spurting spots and sparks of sun. 

It is morning in Rome, and the bronze horses on 
the Arch of Nero trot quietly forward without mov- 
ing, but no one can see them, they are only a dazzle, 
a shock of stronger light against the white-blue sky. 

Morning in Rome ; and the whole city foams out 
to meet it, seething, simmering, surging, seeping. 
All between the Janiculum and the Palatine is un- 
dulating with people. Scarlet, violet, and purple 
togas pattern the mass of black and brown. Murex- 
dyed silk dresses flow beside raw woollen fabrics. 



132 CAN Grande's castle 

The altars smoke incense, the bridges shake under 
the caking mass of sight-seers. "Titus! Titus! 
lo triumphe !" Even now the troops are collected 
near the Temple of Apollo, outside the gates, waiting 
for the signal to march. In the parching Roman 
morning, the hot dust rises and clouds over the city 
— an aureole of triumph. The horses on the Arch 
of Nero paw the golden dust, but it passes, passes, 
brushing along their burnished sides like wind. 

What is that sound ? The marble city shivers 
to the treading of feet. Caesar's legions marching, 
foot — foot — hundreds, thousands of feet. They 
beat the ground, rounding each step double. Com- 
ing — coming — cohort after cohort, with brazen 
trumpets marking the time. One — two — one — 
two — laurel-crowned each one of you, cactus-fibred, 
harsh as sand grinding the rocks of a treeless land, 
rough and salt as a Dead Sea wind, only the fallen 



CAN Grande's castle 133 

are left behind. Blood-red plumes, jarring to the 
footfalls ; they have passed through the gate, they 
are in the walls of the mother city, of marble Rome. 
Their tunics are purple embroidered with gold, their 
armour clanks as they walk, the cold steel of their 
swords is chill in the sun, each is a hero, one by one, 
endless companies, the soldiers come. Back to Rome 
with a victor's spoils, with a victor's wreath on 
every head, and Judah broken is dead, dead! "/o 
triumphe!" The shout knocks and breaks upon 
the spears of the legionaries. 

The God of the Jews is overborne, he has failed 
his people. See the stuffs from the Syrian looms, 
and the vestments of many-colours, they were taken 
from the great Temple at Jerusalem. And the 
watching crowds split their voices acclaiming the 
divine triumph. Mars, and Juno, and Minerva, and 
the rest, those gods are the best who bring victory ! 
And the beasts they have over there ! Is that a 



134 CAN Grande's castle 

crocodile? And that bird with a tail as long as a 
banner, what do you call that? Look at the ele- 
phants, and the dromedaries ! They are harnessed 
in jewels. Oh ! Oh ! The beautiful sight ! Here 
come the prisoners, dirty creatures. "That's a good- 
looking girl there. I have rather a fancy for a 
Jewess. I'll get her, by Bacchus, if I have to mort- 
gage my farm. A man too, of course, to keep the 
breed going ; it will be a good investment, although, 
to be sure, I want the girl myself. Castor and Pollux, 
did you see that picture ! Ten men disembowelled 
on the steps of the altar. That is better than a 
gladiator show any day. I wish I had been there. 
Simon, oh, Simon ! Spit at him, LucuUus. Thumbs 
down for Simon ! Fancy getting him alive, I wonder 
he didn't kill himself first like Cleopatra. This is a 
glorious day, I haven't had such fun in years." 

The bronze horses tread quietly above the triumph- 



CAN Grande's castle 135 

ing multitudes. They too have been spoils of war, 
yet they stand here on the Arch of Nero dominating 
Rome. Time passes — passes — but the horses, calm 
and contained, move forward, dividing one minute 
from another and leaving each behind. 

You should be still now, Roman populace. These 
are the decorations of the Penetralia, the holy Sanc- 
tuary which your soldiers have profaned. But the 
people jeer and scoff, and comment on the queer 
articles carried on the heads of the soldiers. Tragedy 
indeed ! They see no tragedy, only an immense 
spectacle, unique and satisfying. The crowd clears 
its throat and spits and shouts "/o triumphe ! lo 
triumphe!" against the cracking blare of brazen 
trumpets. 

Slowly they come, the symbols of a beaten religion : 
the Golden Table for the Shew-Bread, the Silver 
Trumpets that sounded the Jubilee, the Seven- 



136 CAN Grande's castle 

Branched Candlestick, the very Tables of the Law 
which Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. 
Can Jupiter conquer these ? Slowly they pass, glint- 
ing in the sunlight, staring in the light of day, 
mocked and exhibited. Lord God of Hosts, fall 
upon these people, send your thunders upon them, 
hurl the lightnings of your wrath against this multi- 
tude, raze their marble city so that not one stone 
remain standing. But the sun shines unclouded, 
and the holy vessels pass onward through the Campus 
Martins, through the Circus Flaminius, up the Via 
Sacra to the Capitol, and then . . . The bronze horses 
look into the brilliant sky, they trot slowly without 
moving, they advance slowly, one foot raised. There 
is always another step — one, and another. How 
many does not matter, so that each is taken. 

The spolia opima have passed. The crowd holds 
its breath and quivers. Everyone is tiptoed up to 



CAN Grande's castle 137 

see above his neighbour ; they sway and brace them- 
selves in their serried ranks. Away, over the heads, 
silver eagles glitter, each one marking the passage 
of a legion. The "Victorious Legion" goes by, the 
"Indomitable Legion," the "Spanish Legion," and 
those with a crested lark on their helmets, and that 
other whose centurions are almost smothered under 
the shining reflections of the medallions fastened to 
their armour. Cohort after cohort, legion on the 
heels of legion, the glistening greaves rise and flash 
and drop and pale, scaling from sparkle to dullness 
in a series of rhythmic angles, constantly repeated. 
They swing to the tones of straight brass trumpets, 
they jut out and fall at the call of spiral bugles. 
Above them, the pointed shields move evenly, right 
to left — right to left. The horses curvet and prance, 
and shiver back, checked, on their haunches ; the 
javelins of the horsemen are so many broad-ended 
sticks of flame. 



138 CAN Grande's castle 

Those are the eagles of the Imperial Guard, and 
behind are two golden chariots, "/o triumphe !" 
The roar drowns the trumpets and bugles, the clat- 
ter of the horses' hoofs is a mere rattle of sand rico- 
cheting against the voice of welcoming Rome. The 
Emperor Vespasian rides in one chariot, in the other 
stands Titus. Titus, who has subdued Judea, who 
has humbled Jehovah, and brought the sacred vessels 
of the Lord God of Hosts back with him as a worthy 
offering to the people of Rome. Cheer, therefore, 
good people, you have the Throne of Heaven to re- 
cline upon ; you are possessed of the awful majesty 
of the God of the Jews ; beneath your feet are spread 
the emblems of the Most High ; and your hands are 
made free of the sacred instruments of Salvation. 

What god is that who falls before pikes and spears ! 
Here is another god, his face and hands stained with 
vermilion, after the manner of the Capitoline Jupi- 
ter. His car is of ivory and gold, green plumes nod 



CAN Grande's castle 139 

over the heads of his horses, the military bracelets 
on his arms seem like circling serpents of bitter flame. 
The milk-white horses draw him slowly to the Capitol, 
step by step, along the Via Triumphalis, and step by 
step the old golden horses on the Arch of Nero tread 
down the hours of the lapsing day. 

That night, forty elephants bearing candelabra 
light up the ranges of pillars supporting the triple 
portico of the Capitol. Forty illuminated elephants 
— and the light of their candles is reflected in the 
polished sides of the great horses, above, on the Arch 
of Nero, slowly trotting forward, stationary yet mov- 
ing, in the soft night which hangs over Rome. 

Pavannb to a Brass Orchestra 
Water falls from the sky, and green-fanged lightning 
mouths the heavens. The Earth rolls upon itself, in- 
cessantly creating morning and evening. The moon 



140 CAN Grande's castle 

calls to the waters, swinging them forward and back, 
and the sun draws closer and as rhythmically recedes, 
advancing in the -pattern of an ancient dance, making a 
figure of leaves and aridness. Harmony of chords and 
pauses, fugue of returning balances, canon and canon 
repeating the theme of Earth, Air, and Water. 

A single cymbal-crash of Fire, and for an instant the 
concerted music ceases. But it resumes — Earth, Air, 
and Water, and out of it rise the metals, unconsumed. 
Brazen cymbals, trumpets of silver, bells of bronze. They 
mock at fire. They burn upon themselves and retain their 
entities. Not yet the flame which shall destroy them. 
They shall know all flames but one. They shall be pol- 
ished and corroded, yet shall they persist and play the 
music which accompanies the strange ceremonious dance 
of the sun. 

Constantinople 

Empire of the East ! Byzantium ! Constantinople ! 
The Golden City of the World. A crystal fixed in 



CAN Grande's castle 141 

aquamarines ; a jewel-box set down in a seaside 
garden. All the seas are as blue as Spring lupins, 
and there are so many seas. Look where you please, 
forward, back, or down, there is water. The deep 
blue water of crisp ripples, the long light shimmer 
of flat undulations, the white glare, smoothing into 
purple, of a sun-struck ebb. The Bosphorus winds 
North to the Black Sea. The Golden Horn curves 
into the Sweet Waters. The edge of the city swerves 
away from the Sea of Marmora. Aquamarines, did 
I say? Sapphires, beryls, lapis-lazuli, amethysts, 
and felspar. Whatever stones there are, bluer than 
gentians, bluer than cornflowers, bluer than asters, 
bluer than periwinkles. So blue that the city must 
be golden to complement the water. A gold city, 
shimmering and simmering, starting up like mica 
from the green of lemon trees, and olives, and cy- 
presses. 

Gold ! Gold ! Walls and columns covered with 



142 CAN Grande's castle 

gold. Domes of churches resplendent with gold. 
Innumerable statues of "bronze fairer than pure 
gold," and courts paved with golden tiles. Beyond 
the white and rose-coloured walls of Saint Sophia, 
the city rounds for fourteen great miles ; fourteen 
miles of onychite, and porphyry, and marble ; four- 
teen miles of colonnades, and baths, and porticoes ; 
fourteen miles of gay, garish, gaudy, glaring gold. 
Why, even the Imperial triremes in the harbour have 
gold embroidered gonfalons, and the dolphins, ruf- 
fling out of the water between them, catch the colour 
and dive, each a sharp cutting disk-edge of yellow 
flame. 

It is the same up above, where statues spark like 
stars jutted from a mid-day sky. There are golden 
Emperors at every crossing, and golden Virgins crowd- 
ing every church-front. And, in the centre of the 
great Hippodrome, facing the triremes and the leap- 
ing dolphins, is a fine chariot of Corinthian brass. 



CAN Grande's castle 143 

Four horses harnessed to a gikled quadriga. The 
horses pace evenly forward, in a moment they will 
be trampling upon space, facing out to sea on the 
currents of the morning breeze. But their heads 
are arched and checked, gracefully they pause, one 
leg uplifted, seized and baffled by the arrested move- 
ment. They are the horses of Constantine, brought 
from Rome, so people say, buzzing in the Augus- 
taion. "Fine horses, hey.''" "A good breed, Persia 
from the look of them, though they're a bit thick 
in the barrel for the horses they bring us from there." 
"They bring us their worst, most likely." "Oh, I 
don't know, we buy pretty well. Why, only the 
other day I gave a mint of money for a cargo of Egyp- 
tian maize." "Lucky dog, you'll make on that, with 
all the harvest here ruined by the locusts." 

It is a pretty little wind which plays along the sides 
of the gilded horses, a coquettish little sea wind, blow- 



144 CAN Grande's castle 

ing and listing and finally dropping away altogether 
and going to sleep in a plane-tree behind the Hippo- 
drome. 

Constantinople is a yellow honey-comb, with fat 
bees buzzing in all its many-sided cells. Bees come 
over the flower-blue seas ; bees humming from the 
Steppes of Tartary, from the long line of Nile-fed 
Egypt. Tush ! What would you ! Where there is 
gold there are always men about it ; to steal it, to 
guard it, to sit and rot under its lotus-shining bril- 
liance. The very army is woven of threads drawn 
from the edges of the world. Byzantines are mer- 
chantmen, they roll and flounder in the midst of 
gold coins, they tumble and wallow in money-baths, 
they sit and chuckle under a continuous money- 
spray. And ringed about them is the army, paid to 
shovel back the scattering gold pieces : Dalmatians 
with swords and arrows ; Macedonians with silver 



CAN Grande's castle 145 

belts and gilt shields ; Scholarii, clad in rose-coloured 
tunics ; Varangians, shouldering double battle-axes. 
When they walk, the rattle of them can be heard 
pattering back from every wall and doorway. It 
clacks and cracks even in the Copper Market, above 
the clang of cooking pots and the wrangling whine 
of Jewish traders. Constantinople chatters, buzzes, 
screams, growls, howls, squeals, snorts, brays, croaks, 
screeches, crows, neighs, gabbles, purrs, hisses, brawls, 
roars, shouts, mutters, calls, in every sort of crochet 
and demi-semi-quaver, wavering up in a great con- 
trapuntal murmur — adagio, maestoso, capriccioso, 
scherzo, staccato, crescendo, vivace, veloce, brio — 
brio — brio ! ! A racket of dissonance, a hubbub 
of harmony. Chords ? Discords ? Answer : Byzan- 
tium ! 

People pluck the strings of rebecks and psalteries ; 
they shock the cords of lyres ; they batter tin drums, 
and shatter the guts of kettle-drums when the Em- 



146 CAN gbande's castle 

peror goes to Saint Sophia to worship at an altar of 
precious stones fused into a bed of gold and silver, 
and, as he walks up the nave between the columns 
of green granite, and the columns of porphyry, under 
the golden lily on the Octagonal Tower, the bells 
pour their notes over the roofs, spilling them in single 
jets down on each side of the wide roofs. Drip — 
drip — drip — out of their hearts of beaten bronze, 
slipping and drowning in the noise of the crowds 
clustered below. 

On the top of the Hippodrome, the bronze horses 
trot toward the lupin-coloured Sea of Marmora, 
slowly, without moving ; and, behind them, the 
spokes of the quadriga wheels remain separate and 
single, with the blue sky showing between each one. 

What a city is this, builded of gold and alabaster, 
with myrtle and roses strewn over its floors, and 



CAN Grande's castle 147 

doors of embossed silver opening upon golden trees 
where jewelled birds sing clock-work notes, and 
fountains flow from the beaks of silver eagles. All 
this splendour cooped within the fourteen miles of 
a single city, forsooth ! In Britain, they sit under 
oaken beams ; in France, they eat with hunting- 
knives ; in Germany, men wear coats of their wives' 
weaving. In Italy — but there is a Pope in Italy ! 
The bronze horses pause on the marble Hippodrome, 
and days blow over them, brushing their sides like 
wind. 

It is May eleventh in Constantinople, and the 
Spring-blue sea shivers like a field of lupins run over 
by a breeze. Every tree and shrub spouted over 
every garden-wall flouts a chromatic sequence of 
greens. A long string of camels on the Bridge of 
Justinian moves, black and ostrich-like, against the 
sheen of water. A swallow sheers past the bronze 



148 CAN Grande's castle 

horses and drops among the pillars on top of the 
curve of the Hippodrome ; the great cistern on the 
Spina reflects a speckless sky. It is race-day in 
Constantinople, and the town is turned out upon 
the benches of the Hippodrome, waiting for the pro- 
cession to begin. "Hola! You fellows on the top 
tier, do you see anything .f*" "Nothing yet, but I 
hear music." "Music! Oh, Lord! I should think 
you did. Clear the flagged course there, the proces- 
sion is coming." "Down in front. Sit down, you." 
"Listen. Oh, dear, I'm so fidgety. If the Green 
doesn't win, I'm out a fortune." "Keep still, will 
you, we can't hear the music, you talk so loud." 
" Here they come ! Green! Green! Green! Drown 
those Blues over there. Oh, Green, I say !" 

Away beyond, through the gates, flageolets are 
squealing, and trumpets are splitting their brass 
throats and choking over the sound. Patter — 
patter — patter — horses' hoofs on flagstones. They 



CAN Grande's castle 149 

are coming under the paved arch. There is the Presi- 
dent of the Games in a tunic embroidered with golden 
palm-branches ; there is the Emperor in his pearl- 
lappeted cap, and his vermilion buskins ; and here 
are the racers — - Green — Blue — driving their chari- 
ots, easily standing in their high-wheeled chariots. 
The sun whitens the knives in their girdles, the reins 
flash in the sun like ribbons of spun glass. Three- 
year-olds in the Green chariot, so black they are blue. 
Four blue-black horses, with the sheen of their flanks 
glistening like the grain of polished wood. The 
little ears point forward, their teeth tease the bits. 
They snort and jerk, and the chariot wheels quirk 
over an outstanding stone and jolt down, flat and 
rumbling. The Blue chariot-driver handles a team 
of greys, white as the storks who nest in the cemetery 
beyond the Moslem quarter. He gathers up his 
reins, and the horses fall back against the pole, 
clattering, then fling forward, meet the bit, rear up, 



150 CAN Grande's castle 

and swing inward, settling gradually into a nervous 

jigging as they follow round the course. "Blue! 

Blue! Go for him, Blue!" from the North Corner. 

"Hurrah for the Blue ! Blue to Eternity ! " Slowly 

the procession winds round the Spina, and the crowd 

stands up on the seats and yells and cheers and waves 

handkerchiefs, sixty thousand voices making such a 

noise that only the high screaming of the flageolets 

can be heard above it. The horses toss and twitch, 

the harness jingles, and the gilded eggs and dolphins 

on the Spina coruscate in versicoloured stars. 

« 

Above the Emperor's balcony, the bronze horses 
move quietly forward, and the sun outlines the great 
muscles of their lifted legs. 

They have reached the Grand Stand again, and the 
chariots are shut and barred in their stalls. The 
multitude, rustling as though they were paper being 



CAN Grande's castle 151 

folded, settles down into their seats. The President 
drops a napkin, the bars are unlocked, and the chari- 
ots in a double rush take the straight at top speed, 
Blue leading. Green saving up for the turn at the 
curve. Round the three cones at the end. Blue on 
one wheel, Green undercutting him. Blue turns 
wide to right himself, takes the outside course and 
flashes up the long edge so that you cannot count 
two till he curves again. Down to the Green Corner, 
Blue's off horses slipping just before the cones, one 
hits the pole, loses balance and falls, drags a moment, 
catches his feet as the chariot slows for the circle, 
gathers, plunges, and lunges up and on, while the 
Greens on the benches groan and curse. But the 
black team is worse off, the inside near colt has got 
his leg over a trace. Green checks his animals, the 
horse kicks free, but Blue licks past him on the up 
way, and is ahead at the North turn by a wheel length. 
Green goes round, flogging to make up time. Two 



152 CAN Grande's castle 

eggs and dolphins gone, three more to go. The pace 
has been slow so far, now they must brace up. Bets 
run high, screamed out above the rumble of the chari- 
ots. " Ten on the Green." "Odds fifty for the Blue." 
" Double mine ; those greys have him." " The blacks, 
the blacks, lay you a hundred to one the blacks beat." 
Down, round, up, round, down, so fast they are only 
dust puffs, one can scarcely see which is which. The 
horses are badly blown now, and the drivers yell to 
them, and thrash their churning flanks. The course 
is wet with sweat afid blood, the wheels slide over the 
wet course. Green negotiates the South curve with 
his chariot sideways ; Blue skids over to the flagged 
way and lames a horse on the stones. The Emperor 
is on his feet, staring through his emerald spy-glass. 
Once more round for the last egg and dolphin. Down 
for the last time. Blue's lame horse delays him, but 
he flays him with the whip and the Green Corner 
finds them abreast. The Greens on the seats burst 



CAN Grande's castle 153 

upstanding. "Too far out! Well turned!" "The 
Green's got it!" "Well done, Hirpinus!" The 
Green driver disappears up the long side to the goal, 
waving his right hand, but Blue's lame horse stag- 
gers, stumbles, and goes down, settling into the dust 
with a moan. Vortex of dust, struggling horses, 
golden glitter of the broken chariot. "Overthrown, 
by the Holy Moses ! And hurt too ! Well, well, he 
did his best, that beast always looked skittish to 
me." "Is he dead, do you think? They've got 
the litter." "Most likely. Green! Green! See, 
they're crowning him. Green and the people ! Oh- 
he ! Green!" 

Cool and imperturbable, the four great gilt horses 
slowly pace above the marble columns of the Grand 
Stand. They gaze out upon the lupin-blue water 
beyond the Southern curve. Can they see the Island 
of Corfu from up there, do you think? There are 



154 CAN Grande's castle 

vessels at the Island of Corfu waiting to continue a 
journey. The great horses trot forward without 
moving, and the dust of the race-track sifts over 
them and blows away. 

Constantinople from the Abbey of San Stefano : 
bubbles of opal and amber thrust up in a distant sky, 
pigeon-coloured nebulae closing the end of a long hori- 
zon. Tilting to the little waves of a harbour, the 
good ships Aquila, Paradiso, Pellegrina, leaders of a 
fleet of galleys : dromi, hippogogi, vessels carrying 
timber for turrets, strong vessels holding mangonels. 
Proud vessels under an ancient Doge, keeping Saint 
John's Day at the Abbey of San Stefano, within 
sight of Constantinople. 

Knights in blue and crimson inlaid armour clank 
up and down the gang-planks of the vessels. Flags 
and banners flap loosely at the mast-heads. There 
is the banner of Baldwin of Flanders, the standard 



CAN Grande's castle 155 

of Louis of Blois, the oriflamme of Boniface of Mont- 
ferrat, the pennon of Hugh, Count of Saint Paul, and 
last, greatest, the gonfalon of Saint Mark, dripped so 
low it almost touches the deck, with the lion of Venice 
crumpled in its windless folds. 

Saint John's Day, and High Mass in the Abbey of 
San Stefano. Tliej' need God's help who would pass 
over the double walls and the four hundred towers 
of Constantinople. Te Deum Laudamus 1 The ar- 
moured knights make the sign of the cross, lightly 
touching the crimson and azure devices on their 
breasts with mailed forefingers. 

South wind to the rescue; that was a good mass. 
"Boatswain, what's the direction of that cat's-paw, 
veering round a bit "^ Good." 

Fifty vessels making silver paths in the Summer- 
blue Sea of Marmora. Fifty vessels passing the 
Sweet Waters, blowing up the Bosphorus. 



156 CAN Grande's castle 

Strike your raucous gongs, City of Byzantium. Run 
about like ants between your golden palaces. These 
vessels are the chalices of God's wrath. The spirit 
of Christ walking upon the waters. Or is it anti- 
Christ? This is the true Church. Have we not 
the stone on which Jacob slept, the rod which 
Moses turned into a serpent, a portion of the 
bread of the Last Supper? We are the Virgin's 
chosen abiding place ; why, the picture which 
Saint Luke painted of her is in our keeping. We 
have pulled the sun's rays from the statue of Con- 
stantine and put up the Cross instead. Will that 
bring us nothing ? Cluster round the pink and white 
striped churches, throng the alabaster churches, 
fill the naves with a sound of chanting. Strike the 
terror-gongs and call out the soldiers, for even 
now the plumed knights are disembarking, and the 
snarling of their trumpets mingles with the beating 
of the gongs. 



CAN Grande's castle 157 

The bronze horses on the Hippodrome, harnessed 
to the gilded quadriga, step forward slowly. They 
proceed in a measured cadence. They advance with- 
out moving. There are lights and agitation in the 
city, but the air about the horses has the violet touch 
of night. 

Now, now, you crossbowmen and archers, you go 
first. Stand along the gunwales and be ready to 
jump. Keep those horses still there, don't let them 
get out of order. Lucky we thought of the hides. 
Their damnable Greek fire can't hurt us now. Up 
to the bridge, knights. Three of you abreast, on a 
level with the towers. What's a shower of arrows 
against armour ! An honourable dint blotting out 
the head of a heron, half a plume sheared off a helmet 
so that it leers cock-eyed through the press. Tut! 
Tut ! Little things, the way of war. Jar, jolt, mud 



158 CAN Grande's castle 

— the knights clash together like jumbled chess-men, 
then leap over the bridges. Confusion — contusion 

— raps — bangs — lurches — blows — battle-axes 
thumping on tin shields ; bolts bumping against 
leathern bucklers. "A Boniface to the Rescue!" 
"Baldwin forever!" "Viva San Marco!" Such a 
pounding, pummelling, pitching, pointing, piercing, 
pushing, pelting, poking, panting, punching, parry- 
ing, pulling, prodding, puking, piling, passing, you 
never did see. Stones pour out of the mangonels; 
arrows fly thick as mist. Swords twist against 
swords, bill-hooks batter bill-hooks, staves rattle 
upon staves. One, two, five men up a scaling ladder. 
Chop down on the first, and he rolls off the ladder 
with his skull in two halves ; rip up the bowels of 
the second, he drips off the ladder like an overturned 
pail. But the third catches his adversary between 
the legs with a pike and pitches him over as one would 
toss a truss of hay. Way for the three ladder men ! 



CAN Grande's castle 159 

Their feet are on the tower, their plumes flower, 
argent and gold, above the muck of slaughter. From 
the main truck of the ships there is a constant seep- 
ing of Venetians over the walls of Constantinople. 
They flow into the city, they throw themselves 
upon the beleaguered city. They smash her de- 
fenders, and crash her soldiers to mere bits of broken 
metal. 

Byzantines, Copts, Russians, Persians, Armenians, 
Moslems, the great army of the Franks is knocking 
at the gates of your towers. Open the gates. Open, 
open, or we will tear down your doors, and breach 
the triple thickness of your walls. Seventeen burn- 
ing boats indeed, and have the Venetians no boat- 
hooks? They make pretty fireworks to pleasure 
our knights of an evening when they come to sup 
with Doge Dandolo. At night we will sleep, but in 
the morning we will kill again. Under your tents, 
helmeted knights ; into your cabin, old Doge. The 



160 CAN Grande's castle 

stars glitter in the Sea of Marmora, and above the 
city, black in the brilliance of the stars, the great 
horses of Constantine advance, pausing, blotting 
their shadows against the sprinkled sky. 

From June until September, the fracas goes on. 
The chanting of masses, the shouting of battle 
songs, sweep antiphonally over Constantinople. They 
blend and blur, but what is that light tinkling.? 
Tambourines ? What is that snapping ? Castanets ? 
What is that yellow light in the direction of the 
Saracen mosque ? My God ! Fire ! Gold of metals, 
you have met your king. Ringed and crowned, he 
takes his place in the jewelled city. Gold of fire 
mounted upon all the lesser golds. The twin tongues 
of flame flaunt above the housetops. Banners of 
scarlet, spears of saffron, spikes of rose and melted 
orange. What are the little flags of the Crusaders 
to these ! They clamoured for pay and won the 



CAN Grande's castle 161 

elements. Over the Peninsula of Marmora it 
comes. The whips of its fire-thongs lash the golden city, 
A conflagration half a league wide. Magnificent 
churches, splendid palaces, great commercial streets, 
are burning. Golden domes melt and liquefy, and 
people flee from the dripping of them. Lakes of 
gold lie upon the pavements ; pillars crack and tum- 
ble, making dams and bridges over the hot gold. 
Two days, two nights, the fire rages, and through 
the roar of it the little cries of frightened birds come 
thin and pitiful. Earth pleading with fire. Earth 
begging quarter of the awful majesty of fire. The 
birds wheel over Constantinople; they perch upon 
the cool bronze horses standing above the Hippo- 
drome. The quiet horses who wait and advance. 
This is not their fire, they trample on the luminous- 
ness of flames, their strong hmd legs plant them 
firmly on the marble coping. They watch the fall- 
ing of the fire, they gaze upon the ruins spread about 



162 CAN Grande's castle 

them, and the pungence of charred wood brushes 

along their tarnished sides like wind. 

The Franks have made an Emperor and now the 
Greeks have murdered him. The Doge asks for 
fifty centenaria in gold to pay his sailors. Who will 
pay, now that the Emperor is dead ? Declare a 
siege and pay yourselves. Count, and Marquis, and 
Doge. Set your ships bow to stern, a half a league 
of them. Sail up the Golden Horn, and attack the 
walls in a hundred places. You fail to-day, but you 
will win to-morrow. Bring up your battering-rams 
and ballistse ; hurl stones from your mangonels ; 
run up your scaling ladders and across your skin 
bridges. Winter is over and Spring is in your veins. 
Your blood mounts like sap, mount up the ladder 
after it. Two sliips to a tower, and four towers 
taken. Three gates battered in. The city falls. 
Cruel saints, you have betrayed your votaries. Even 



CAN Grande's castle 163 

the relic of the Virgin's dress in the Panhagia of 
Blachcrnge has been useless. The knights enter 
Byzantium, and their flickering pennants are the 
flamelets of a new conflagration. Fire of flesh burn- 
ing in the blood of the populace. They would make 
the sign of the cross, would they, so that the Franks 
may spare them ? But the sap is up in the Frankish 
veins, the fire calls for fuel. Blood burns to who 
will ignite it. The swords itch for the taste of en- 
trails, the lances twitch at sight of a Byzantine. 
Feed, Fire ! Here are men, and women, and chil- 
dren, full of blood for the relish of your weapons. 
Spring sap, how many women ! Good Frankish seed 
for the women of Byzantium. Blood and lust, you 
shall empty yourselves upon the city. Your swords 
shall exhaust themselves upon these Greeks. Your 
hands shall satisfy themselves with gold. Spit at 
the priests. This is the Greek church, not ours. 
Grab the sacred furniture of the churches, fornicate 



164 CAN Grande's castle 

upon the high altar of Saint Sophia, and load the 
jewels upon the donkeys you have driven into the 
church to receive them. Old pagan Crusaders, this 
is the Orgy of Spring ! Lust and blood, the birth- 
right of the world. 

The bright, shining horses tread upon the clean 
coping of the Hippodrome, and the Sea of Marmora 
lies before them like a lupin field run over by a 
breeze. 

What are you now, Constantinople? A sacked 
city ; and the tale of your plimdering shall outdo 
the tale of your splendours for wonder. Three days 
they pillage you Burmese rubies rattle in the 
pockets of common soldiers. The golden tree is 
hacked to bits and carried off by crossbowmen. An 
infantry sergeant hiccoughs over the wine he drinks 
from an altar cup. The knights live in palaces and 



CAN Grande's castle 165 

dip their plumes under the arch of the Emperor's 
bed-chamber. 

In the Sea of Marmora, the good ships Aquila, 
Paradiso, Pellegrina swing at anchor. The dromi 
and hippogogi ride free and empty. They bob to 
the horses high above them on the Hippodrome. 
They dance to the rhythmic beat of hammers float- 
ing out to them from the city of Constantinople. 

Throb — throb — a dying pulse counts its vibra- 
tions. Throb — throb — and each stroke means a 
gobbet of gold. They tear it down from the walls 
and doors, they rip it from ceilings and pry it up 
from floors. They chip it off altars, they rip it out 
of panels, they hew it from obelisks, they gouge it 
from enamels. This is a death dance, a whirligig, 
a skeleton city footing a jig, a tarantella quirked 
to hammer-stroke time ; a corpse in motley ogling 
a crime. Tap — tap — tap — goes the pantomime. 

Grinning devils watch church cutting the throat 



166 CAN Grande's castle 

of church. Chuckling gargoyles in France, in Britain, 
rub their stomachs and squeeze themselves together 
in an ecstasy of delight. Ho ! Ho ! Marquis Boni- 
face, Count Hugh, Sieur Louis. What plunder do 
you carry home.'' What relics do you bring to your 
Gothic cathedrals? The head of Saint Clement.'* 
The arm of John the Baptist? A bit of the wood of 
the True Cross ? Statues are only so much metal, 
but these are treasures worth fighting for. Fight- 
ing, quotha ! Murdering, stealing. The Pope will 
absolve you, only bring him home a tear of Christ, 
and you will see. A tear of Christ ! Eli, Eli, lama 
sabachthani I Oh, pitiful world ! Pitiful knights 
in your inlaid armour ! Pitiful Doge, preening him- 
self in the Palace of Blachernae ! 

Above the despoiled city, the Corinthian horses 
trot calmly forward, without moving, and the quad- 
riga behind them glitters in the sun. 



CAN Grande's castle • 167 

People have blood, but statues have gold, and 
silver, and bronze. Melt them ! Melt them ! " Gee ! 
Haw!" Guide the oxen carefully. Four oxen to 
drag the head of Juno to the furnace. White oxen 
to transport Minerva; fawn-coloured oxen for the 
colossal Hercules of Lysippus. Pour them into the 
furnaces so that they run out mere soft metal ripe 
for coining. Two foot-sergeants get as much as a 
horse-sergeant, and two horse-sergeants as much 
as a knight. Flatten out Constantinople. Raze her 
many standing statues, shave the Augustaion to a 
stark stretch of paving-stones. Melt the bones of 
beauty, indomitable Crusaders, and pay the Vene- 
tians fifty thousand silver marks as befits an honest 
company of dedicated gentlemen, 

"The Doge wants those horses, does he? Just as 
they are, unmelted ? Holy Saint Christopher, what 
for ? Pity he didn't speak sooner, I sent Walter the 



168 CAN Grande's castle 

Smith to cut the gold off them this morning, but it 
sticks like the very devil and he hasn't done much. 
Well, well, the Doge can have them. A man with a 
whim must be given way to, particularly when he 
owns all the ships. How about that gilded chariot?" 
"Oh, he can't manage that. Just the horses. You 
were in a mighty hurry with that cutting, it seems 
to me. You've made them look like zebras, and 
he'll not like that. He's a bit of a connoisseur in 
horse-flesh, even if he does live in the water. Wants 
to mate them to the dolphins probably, and go 
a-campaigning astride of fishes. Ha! Ha! Ha!" 
"Steady there, lower the horses carefully, they are 
for the Doge." One — one — one — one — down from 
the top of the Hippodrome. One — one — one — 
one — on ox-carts rumbling toward the water's edge, 
in boats rowing over the lupin-coloured sea. Great 
horses, trot calmly on your sides, roll quietly to the 
heaving of the bright sea. Above you, sails go up. 



CAN Grande's castle 169 

anchors are weighed. The gonfalon of Saint Mark 
flings its extended lion to the freshening wind. To 
Venice, Aquila, Paradiso, Pellegrina, with your at- 
tendant dromi I To Venice ! Over the running waves 
of the Spring-blue sea. 

Beneath a Crooked Rainbow 
As the seasons of Earth are Fire, so are the seasons 
of men. The departure of Fire is a change, and the 
coming of Fire is a greater change. Demand not that 
which is over, hut acclaim what is still to come. So the 
Earth builds up her cities, and falls upon them with 
weeds and nettles; and Water flows over the orchards 
of past centuries. On the sand-hills shall apple trees 
flourish, and in the water-courses shall be gathered a 
harvest of plums. Earth, Air, and Water abide in 
fluctuation. But man, in the days between his birth 
and dying, fashions metals to himself, and they are 
without heat or cold. In the Winter solstice, they are 



170 CAN Grande's castle 

not altered like the Air, nor hardened like the Water, 
nor shrivelled like the Earth, and the heats of Summer 
bring them no burgeoning. Therefore are metals out- 
side the elements. Between melting and melting they 
are beyond the Water, and apart from the Earth, and 
severed from the Air. Fire alone is of them, and 
master. Withdrawn from Fire, they dwell in isolation. 

Venice 
Venice anadyomene ! City of reflections ! A cloud 
of rose and violet poised upon a changing sea. City 
of soft waters washing marble stairways, of feet 
moving over stones with the continuous sound of 
slipping water. Floating, wavering city, shot 
through with the silver threads of water, woven 
with the green-gold of flowing water, your marble 
Rivas block the tides as they sweep in over the 
Lagoons, your towers fling golden figures of Fortune 
into the carnation sky at sunset, the polished marble 



CAN Grande's castle 171 

of the walls of old palaces burns red to the flaring 
torches set in cressets before your doors. Strange 
city, belonging neither to earth nor water, where the 
slender spandrels of vines melt into the carvings of 
arched windows, and crabs ferry themselves through 
the moon-green water rippling over the steps of a 
decaying church. 

Beautiful, faded city. The sea wind has dimmed 
your Oriental extravagance to an iris of rose, and 
amber, and lilac. You are dim and reminiscent 
like the frayed hangings of your State Chambers, 
and the stucco of your house-fronts crumbles into 
the canals with a gentle dripping which no one 
notices. 

A tabernacle set in glass, an ivory ornament rest- 
ing upon a table of polished steel. It is the surface 
of the sea, spangled, crinkled, engine-turned to 
whorls of blue and silver, ridged in waves of flower- 
green and gold. Sequins of gold skip upon the 



172 CAN Grande's castle 

water, crocus-yellow flames dart against white 
smoothness and disappear, wafers of many colours 
float and intermingle. The Lagoons are a white 
fire burning to the blue band of the Lido, restlessly 
shifting under the cool, still, faint peaks of the 
Euganean Hills. 

Where is there such another city ? She has taken 
all the Orient to herself. She has treated with 
Barbarossa, with Palseologus, with the Pope, the 
Tzar, the Caliph, the Sultan, and the Grand Khan. 
Her returning vessels have discharged upon the mole 
metals and jewels, pearls from the Gulf of Oman, 
silks from Damascus, camel's-hair fabrics from 
Erzeroum. The columns of Saint John of Acre 
have been landed on her jetties, and the great lions 
from the Piraeus. Now she rests and glitters, holding 
her treasures lightly, taking them for granted, chat- 
ting among the fringes, and tinkling sherbet spoons 
of an evening in the dark shadow of the Campanile. 



CAN Grande's castle 173 

Up from the flickering water, beyond the laced 
colonnades of the Ducal Palace — golden bubbles, 
flung out upon a sky of ripe blue. Arches of white 
and scarlet flowers, pillars of porphyry, columns of 
jasper, open loggias of deep-green serpentine flaked 
with snow. In the architraves, stones chipped and 
patterned, the blues studded with greens, the greens 
circling round yellows, reds of every depth, clear 
purples, heliotropes clouded into a vague white. 
Above them, all about them, the restless movement 
of carven stone ; it is involuted and grotesque, it is 
acanthus leaves and roses, it is palm branches and 
vine tendrils, it is feathers and the tails of birds, all 
blowing on a day of sdrocco. Angels rise among the 
swirling acanthus leaves, angels and leaves weaving 
an upstarting line, ending in the great star of Christ 
struck upon the edge of a golden dome. Saint 
Mark's Church, gazing down the length of the cheq- 



174 CAN Grande's castle 

uered Piazza, thrusting itself upon the black and 
white pavement, rising out of the flat tiles in a rattle 
of colours, soaring toward the full sky like a broken 
prism whirling at last into the gold bubbles of its 
five wide domes. The Campanile mounts above it, 
but the Campanile is only brick, even if it has a 
pointed top which j^ou cannot see without lying on 
your back. The pigeons can fly up to it, but the 
pigeons prefer the angles and hollows of the sculp- 
tured church. 

Saint Mark's Church — and over the chief arch, 
among the capitals of foaming leaves and bent 
grasses, trample four great horses. They are of gold, 
of gilding so fine that it has not faded. They are 
tarnished here and there, but their fair colour over- 
comes the green corroding and is a blinding to the 
eyes in sunshine. Four magnificent, muscular horses, 
lightly stepping upon traceried columns, one forefoot 
raised to launch them forward. They stand over the 



CAN ghande's castle 175 

high door, caught back a moment before springing, 
held an instant to the perfection of a movement about 
to begin, and the pigeons circle round them brushing 
against their sides like wind. 

But, dear me. Saint Mark's is the only thing in the 
Piazza that is not talking, and walking to and fro, 
and cheapening shoe buckles at a stall, and playing 
panfil and hassetta at little round tables by the wall, 
and singing to guitars, and whistling to poodles, and 
shouting to acquaintances, and giving orders to ser- 
vants, and whispering a scandal behind fans, and 
carrying tomatoes in copper pans, and flying on 
messages, and lying to creditors, and spying on sus- 
pects, and colliding with masked loungers, and crying 
out the merits of fried fish, caught when the tide 
comes leaping through the Tre Porti. A dish of tea 
at a coffee-house, and then cross one leg over the 
other and wait. She will be here by seven o'clock. 



176 CAN Grande's castle 

and a faithful cicisheo has her charms to muse upon 
until then. Ah, Venice, chattering, flattering, occu- 
pied Venice, what are the sculptured angels and 
golden horses to you. You are far too busy to 
glance at them. They are chiefly remarkable as 
curiosities, for whoever saw a real angel, and as to 
a real horse — "I saw a stuffed one for a soldo, 
the other day, in the Campo San Polo. Un ele- 
phanto, Gastone, taller than my shoulder and the 
eyes were made of glass, they would pass for perfect 
any day." 

Ah, the beautiful palaces, with their gateways of 
gilded iron frilled into arms and coronets, quilled into 
shooting leaves and tendrils, filled with rosettes, 
fretted by heraldic emblems ! Ah, the beautiful 
taste, which wastes no time on heavy stone, but cuts 
flowers, and foliage, and flourishes, and ribbons out 
of — stucco ! Bows of stucco glued about a ceiling 



CAN Grande's castle 177 

by Tiepolo, and ranged underneath, frail white-and- 
gold, rose-and-gold, green-and-gold chairs, fair con- 
soles of polished lacquer supporting great mirrors of 
Murano. Hangings of blue silk with silver fringes, 
behind your folds, la Signora Benzona accords a 
favour to the Cavalier Giuseppe Trevis. Upon a 
salmon-coloured sofa striped witli pistachio-green, 
the Cavaliera Contarini flirts with both her cicisbei 
at once, in a charming impartiality. Kisses? 
Ah, indeed, certainly kisses. Hands tickling against 
hands ? But assuredly, one for each of you. The 
heel of a left slipper caught against a buckled shoe, 
the toe of a right foot pressed beneath a broader 
sole; but the toll is finished. "Tut! Tut! Gentle- 
men ! With the other present ! Have you no deli- 
cacy.'' To-night perhaps, after the Ridotto, we will 
take a giro in my gondola as far as Malamocco, Signor 
Bianchi. And to-morrow. Carlo Pin, wUl you go to 
church with me ? There is something in the tones of 



178 CAN Grande's castle 

an organ, I know not what exactly, but it has its 

effect." 

"You rang, Illustrissima?" "Of course I rang. 
Stupid, did you think it was the cat?" "Your 
nobility desires?" "The time, Blocklaead, what is 
the time ?" "Past seven, Illustrissima." "Ye Gods, 
how time passes when one sleeps ! Bring my chocolate 
at once, and call Giannina." With a yawn, the lady 
rises, just as the sun fades away from the flying figure 
of Fortune on the top of the Dogana. "Candles, 
Moracchio." And the misty mirrors prick and pul- 
sate with reflections of blurred flame. Flame-points, 
and behind them the puce-coloured curtains of a bed ; 
an escritoire with feathered pens and Spanish wax ; a 
table with rouge-pots and powder-boxes ; a lady, naked 
as a Venus, slipping into a silk shift. In the misty 
mirrors, she is all curves and colour, all slenderness 
and tapering, all languor and vivacity. Even 



CAN gbande's castle 179 

Giannina murmurs, " Che hella Madonna mia I " as 
she pulls the shift into place. But the door is ajar, 
a mere harmless crack to make a fuss about. "Only 
one eye, Cara Mia, I assure you the other saw nothing 
but the panel. I ask for so much, and I have only 
taken the pleasure of one little eye. I must kiss 
them, Signora Bellissima, two little red berries, like 
the fruit of the potentillas in the grass at Sant' Elena. 
Musical Musical The barque of music is coming 
down the canal. Sit on my knee a moment, the 
Casino can wait ; and after you have won a thousand 
zecchini, will you be a second Danae and go with me 
to the early morning market.'* Then you shall come 
home and sleep all day in the great bed among the 
roses I shall buy for you. With your gold? Per- 
haps, my dearest tease, the luck has deserted me 
lately. But there are ways of paying, are there not, 
and I am an honourable man." 



180 CAN Grande's castle 

The great horses of Saint Mark's trot softly for- 
ward on their sculptured pedestals, without moving. 
Behind them, the glass of the arched window is dark, 
but the Piazza is a bowl of lights, a tambourine of 
little bell-stroke laughter. The golden horses step 
forward, dimly shimmering in the light of the lamps 
below, and the pigeons sleep quietly on the stands at 
their feet. 

Green Lion of Saint Mark upon your high pedestal ! 
Winged Lion of Saint Mark, your head turned over 
the blinding Lagoons to the blue Lido, your tail 
pointing down the sweeping flow of the Grand Canal ! 
What do you see, Green Lion of the Patron Saint.? 
Boats.'' Masts? Quaint paintings on the broad 
bows of bragozzi, orange sails contra-crossing one 
another over tossing ripples. Gondolas tipping to 
the oars of the barcajuoli, slipping under the Ponte 



CAN Grande's castle 181 

della Paglia, dipping between sardine topi, skipping 
past the Piazzetta, curving away to the Giudecca, 
where it lies beyond the crystal pinnacles of Santa 
Maria della Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore which 
has the lustre of roses. 

What do you smell, Lion ? Boiling hot chestnuts, 
fried cuttles, fried puffs of pastry ; the pungent odour 
of salt water and of dead fish ; the nostalgic aroma of 
sandal-wood and myrrh, of musk, of leopard skins 
and the twin tusks of elephants. 

And you, great Lion of the Ducal Palace, what 
goes on at your feet? People knotted together or 
scattering, pattering over the old stones in imper- 
tinent satin slippers, flippantly tapping the pavement 
with red heels. Whirls of people circle like the 
pigeons, knots of people spot the greyness of the 
stones, ribbons of people file along the colonnades, 
rayed lines of people between the Procuratie stripe 
the pavement sideways, criss-cross, at oblique angles. 



182 CAN Grande's castle 

Spangles snap and fade ; gems glitter. A gentleman 
in a buttercup-coloured coat goes by with a bouquet. 
A sea-green gown brocaded with cherry and violet 
stays an instant before a stall to buy a packet of 
ambergris. Pilgrims with staffs and cockles knock 
the stones as they shuflfle along, a water-carrier shouts 
out a song. A scarlet sacristan jingles his keys; 
purple robes of justices saunter at ease. Messer 
Goldoni hustles by to a rehearsal, and three famous 
castrati, i Signori Pacchierotti, Aprili, Rubenelli, 
rustle their mantles and adjust their masks, ogling 
the ladies with gold lorgnons. Blind men sniffle into 
flageolets, marionette men hurry on to a distant 
Campo in a flurry of cotton streamers. If Venice is 
a flowing of water, it is also a flowing of people. All 
Europe runs into this wide square. There is Mon- 
sieur Montesquieu, just from France, taking notes on 
the sly ; there is Mrs. Piozzi, from England, with an 
eye to everything, even chicken-coops ; Herr Goethe, 



CAN Grande's castle 183 

from the Court at Weimar, trying to overcome a fit 
of mental indigestion ; Madame Vigee le Brun, ques- 
tioning the merit of her work and that of Rosalba 
Carriera. You have much to watch. Lion, the whole 
earth cannot match the pageant of this great square, 
in the limpid sun-shot air, between the towering 
Campanile and the blaze of Saint Mark's angels. 
Star-fish patterns, jelly-fish rounds of colour, if the 
sea quivers with variety so does the Piazza. But 
above, on the fagade of the jewelled church, the 
horses do not change. They stand vigorous and im- 
movable, stepping lightly as though poised upon glass. 
Metal horses set upon shifting shards of glass, and 
the soft diphthongs of the Venetian dialect float over 
them like wind. 

There are two Venices, the one we walk upon, and 
the one which wavers up to us inverted from the 
water of the canals. The silver prow of a gondola 



184 CAN Grande's castle 

winds round a wall, and in the moss-brown water 
another gondola joins it, bottom to bottom, with the 
teeth of the prow infinitely repeated. A cypress 
closes the end of a rio, and driven into the thick water 
another cypress spindles beneath us, and the wake of 
our boat leaves its foliage cut to tatters as it passes 
on. We plough through the veined pinks and sub- 
dued scarlets of the facades of palaces ; we sheer a 
path through a spotted sky and blunt the tip of a 
soaring campanile. Are we swimming in the heavens, 
turned legend and constellation ? Truly it seems so. 
"How you go on, Cavalier, certainly you are a for- 
eigner to notice such things. The Lido, Giuseppe. 
I have a nostalgia for flowers to-day, and besides, 
abroad so early in the afternoon — what shocking 
style ! The custom of the country, my dear Sir, 
here we go to bed by sunlight as you will see." 

Sweep out of the broad canal, turn to the hanging 
snow summits. Oh, the beautiful silver light, the 



CAN Grande's castle 185 

blue light shimmering with silver. The clear sun- 
light on rose brick and amber marble. The sky so 
pale it is white, so bright it is yellow, so cloudless it is 
blue. Oh, the shafts of sapphire striping the wide 
water, the specks of gold dancing along it, the dia- 
mond roses opening and shutting upon its surface ! 
Some one is singing in a distant boat : 

"Amanti, ci vuole costanza in amor^ 

Amando, 

Penando, 
Si speri, si, si." 
The lady shrugs her shoulders. "These fishermen 
are very droll. What do the canaglia know about 
love. Breeding, yes, that is certainlj^ their affair, but 
love! PiU presto, Giuseppe. How the sun burns!" 
Rock over the streaked Lagoon, gondola, pock the 
blue strips with white, shock purple shadows through 
the silver strata, set blocks of iris cannoning against 
gold. This is the rainbow over which we are float- 



186 CAN Grande's castle 

ing, and the heart-shaped city behind us is a reli- 
quary of old ivory laid upon azure silk. Your hand, 
Signor the Foreigner, be careful lest she wet those 
fine French stockings, they cost I do not know how 
much a pair. Now run away across the Lido, gather- 
ing violets and periwinkles. The lady has a whim for 
a villeggiatura, and why not ? Those scarlet pome- 
granate blossoms will look well in her hair to-night at 
the opera. But one cannot linger long, already the 
Dolomites are turning pink, and there is a whole 
night ahead of us to be cajoled somehow. A mile 
away from Venice and it is too far. " Felicissima 
notte!" Wax candles shine in the windows. The 
little stars of the gondola lanterns glide between dark 
walls. Broken moonlight shivers in the canals. And 
the masks come out, thronging the streets and squares 
with a chequer-work of black cloaks and white faces. 
Little white faces floating like pond-lilies above 
the water. Floating faces adrift over unfathomable 



CAN Grande's castle 187 

depths. Have j^ou ever heard the words, Libertd, Inde- 
pendenza, e Eguaglianza ? "What stuff and nonsense ! 
Of course I have read your great writer, Rousseau ; I 
cried my heart out over ' La Nouvelle HSlo'ise,' but in 
practice ! Wake my servants, the lazy fellows are 
always asleep, you will find them curled up on the 
stairs most likely. It is time we went to the Mendi- 
canti to hear the oratorio. Ah, but those poor 
orphans sing with a charm ! It makes one weep to 
hear them, only the old Maestro di Capella will beat 
time with his music on the grill. It is quite ridic- 
ulous, they could go through it perfectly without him. 
Misericordia ! The red light ! That is the gondola 
of the Supreme Tribunal taking some poor soul to 
the Piombi ; God protect him ! But it does not con- 
cern us, my friend. Ridiamo a duetto!" Little tink- 
ling drops from the oars of the boatmen, little tinkling 
laughter wafted across the moonlight. 



188 CAN Grande's castle 

Four horses parading in front of a splendid church. 
Four ancient horses with ears pointed forward, listen- 
ing. One foot is raised, they advance without moving. 
To what do they listen ? To the serenades they have 
heard so often? Cavatine, canzonette, dance songs, 
hymns, for six hundred years the songs of Venice have 
drifted past them, lightly, as the wings of pigeons. 
And month by month the old moon has sailed over 
them, as she did in Constantinople, as she did in 
Rome. 

Saint Stephen's Day, and the Carnival ! For weeks 
now Venice will be amused. Folly to think of any- 
thing but fun. Toot the fifes ! Bang the drums ! 
Did you ever see anything so jolly in all your life 
before? Keep your elbows to your sides, there isn't 
room to square them. "My! What a flare! 
Rockets in broad daylight ! I declare they make 



CAN GRA^rDE's CASTLE 189 

the old horses of Saint Mark's blush pink when they 
burst. Thirsty? So am I, what will you have? 
Wine or oranges ? Don't jostle so, old fellow, we 
can look in the window as well as you. See that 
apothecary's stall, isn't that a gay festoon? Curse 
me, if it isn't made of leeches ; what will these shop- 
keepers do next ! That mask has a well-turned ankle. 
Good evening, my charmer. You are as beautiful as 
a parrot, as white as linen, as light as a rabbit. Ay ! 
0-o-h ! The she-camel ! She aimed her confetti right 
at my eye. Come on, Tito, let's go and see them be- 
head the bull. Hold on a minute though, somebody's 
pulling my cloak. Just one little squeeze, Beauty, 
you shouldn't tweak a man's cloak if you don't want 
to be squeezed. You plump little pudding, you little 
pecking pigeon, I'll get more next time. Wow ! Here 
comes Arlecchino. Push back, push back, the come- 
dians are coming. Stow in your fat belly, 'lusirissinw, 
you take up room enough for two." 



190 CAN Grande's castle 

Somebody beats a gong, and three drummers 
cleave a path through the crowd. Bang! Bang! 
BANG ! So loud it splits the hearing. Mattachino 
leaps down the path. He is in white, with red lacings 
and red shoes. On his arm is a basket of eggs. 
Right, left, into the crowd, skim the eggs. Duck — 
jump — it is no use. Plump, on some one's front ; 
pat, against some one's hat. The eggs crack, and 
scented waters run out of them, filling the air with 
the sweet smells of musk and bergamot. But here 
is a wheel of colours rolling down the path. Clown ! 
Clown ! It is Arlecchino, in his patched coat. It 
was green and he has botched it with red, or is it 
yellow, or possibly blue. It is hard to tell, he turns 
so fast. Three somersaults, and he comes up stand- 
ing, and makes a long nose, and sweeps off his hat 
with the hare's fud, and glares solemnly into the eyes 
of a gentleman in spectacles. "Sir," says Arlecchino, 
"have you by chance a toothache.'' I can tell you 



CAN geande's castle 191 

how to cure it. Take an apple, cut it into four equal 
parts, put one of these into your mouth, and thrust 
your head into an oven until the apple is baked. I 
swear on my honour you will never have the tooth- 
ache again." Zip ! Sizz ! No use in the cane. A 
pirouette and he is away again. A hand-spring, a 
double cut-under, and the parti-coloured rags are 
only a tag bouncing up out of surging black mantles. 
But there is sometliing more wonderful yet. Set 
your faces to the Piazzetta, people ; push, slam, jam, 
to keep your places. "A balloon is going up from 
the Dogana del Mare, a balloon like a moon or some- 
thing else starry. A meteor, a comet, I don't really 
know what ; it looks, so they say, like a huge apricot, 
or a pear — yes, that's surely the thing — blushing 
red, mellow yellow, a fruit on the wing, garlanded 
with streamers and tails, all a-whirl and a-flutter. 
Cut the string and she sails, till she lands in the 
gutter." "How do you know she lands in the gutter. 



192 CAN grande's castle 

Booby?" "Where else should she land, unless in 
the sea?" "You're a fool, I suppose you sat up all 
night writing that doggerel." "Not at all, it is an 
improvisation." "Here, keep back, you can't push 
past me with your talk. Oh! Look! Look!" 

That is a balloon. It rises slowly — slowly — 
above the Dogana. It wavers, dips, and poises ; it 
mounts in the silver air, it floats without direction ; 
suspended in movement, it hangs, a clear pear of red 
and yellow, opposite the melting, opal-tinted city. 
And the reflection of it also floats, perfect in colour 
but cooler, perfect in outline but more vague, in the 
glassy water of the Grand Canal. The blue sky sus- 
tains it ; the blue water encloses it. Then balloon 
and reflection swing gently seaward. One ascends, 
the other descends. Each dwindles to a speck. Ah, 
the semblance is gone, the water has nothing ; but 
the sky focusses about a point of fire, a formless 
iridescence sailing higher, become a mere burning. 



CAN geande's castle 193 

until that too is absorbed in the brilliance of the 
clouds. 

You cheer, people, but you do not know for what. 
A beautiful toy ? Undoubtedly you think so. Shout 
yourselves hoarse, you who have conquered the sea, 
do you underestimate the air.'' Joke, laugh, pur- 
blind populace. You have been vouchsafed an awful 
vision, and you do nothing but clap your hands. 

That is over, and here is Pantalone calling to you. 
"Going — going — I am selling my furniture. Two 
dozen chairs of fine hoUand ; fourteen tables of almond 
paste; six majolica mattresses full of scrapings of 
haycocks ; a semolina bedcover ; six truflBed cushions ; 
two pavilions of spider-web trimmed with tassels 
made from the moustaches of Swiss door-keepers. 
Oh! The Moon! The Moon ! The good little yellow 
moon, no bigger than an omelet of eight eggs. Come, 
I will throw in the moon. A quarter-ducat for the 
moon, good people. Take your opportunity." 



194 CAN Grande's castle 

Great gold horses, quietly stepping above the little 
mandarin figures, strong horses above the whirling 
porcelain figures, are the pigeons the only birds in 
Venice? Have the swallows told you nothing, flying 
from the West? 

The bells of Saint Mark's Church ring midnight. 
The carnival is over. 

In the deserted square, the pavement is littered 
with feathers, confetti, orange-peel, and pumpkin- 
seeds. But the golden horses on the balcony over 
the high door trot forward, without moving, and the 
shadow of the arch above them is thrown farther 
and farther forward as the moon drops toward the 
Lagoon. 

Bronze armies marching on a sea-shell city. 
Slanted muskets filing over the passes of tall Alps. 
Who is this man who leads you, carven in new bronze. 



CAN Grande's castle 195 

supple as metal still cooling, firm as metal from a 
fresh-broken mold ? A bright bronze general head- 
ing armies. The tread of his grenadiers is awful, 
continuous. How will it be in the streets of the 
glass city.'* These men are the flying letters of a 
new gospel. They are the tablets of another law. 
Twenty-eight, this general ! Ah, but the metal is 
well compounded. He has been victorious in four- 
teen pitched battles and seventy fights ; he has 
taken five hundred field pieces, and two thousand 
of heavy calibre ; he has sent thirty millions back to 
the treasury of France. The Kings of Naples and 
Sardinia write him friendly letters ; the Pope and 
the Duke of Parma weary themselves with com- 
pliments. The English have retired from Genoa, 
Leghorn, and Corsica. 

Little glass masks, have you heard nothing of 
this man ? What of the new French ambassador. 
Citizen Lallemont? You have seen his gondoliers 



196 CAN Grande's castle 

and the tricolore cockade in their caps ? It is a 
puzzling business, but you can hardly expect us to 
be alarmed, we have been a republic for centuries. 
Still, these new ideas are intriguing, they say several 
gentlemen have adopted them. "Alvise Pisani, my 
Dear, and Abbate Colalto, also Bragadin, and So- 
ranza, and Labbia. Oh, there was much talk about 
it last night. Such strange notions ! But the cock- 
ade is very pretty. I have the ribbon, and I am 
going to make a few. Signora Fontana gave me the 
pattern." 

Columbus discovered America. Ah, it was then 
you should have made your cockades. Is it Bona- 
parte or the Cape of Good Hope which has compassed 
your destiny ? Little porcelain figures, can you stand 
the shock of bronze .' 

No, evidently. The quills of the Senate sec- 
retaries are worn blunt, writing note after note to the 
General of the Armies. But still he marches for- 



CAN Grande's castle 197 

ward, and his soldiers, dressed as peasants, have 
invaded Breschia and Bergamo. And what a man ! 
Never satisfied. He must have this — that — and 
other things as well. He must have guns, cannon, 
horses, mules, food, forage. What is all this talk of a 
Cisalpine Republic ? The Senate wavers like so many 
sea anemones in an advancing tide. Ascension Day 
is approaching. Shall the Doge go in the Bucentoro 
to wed the sea "in token of real and perpetual domin- 
ion"? The Senate dictates, the secretaries write, 
and the Arsenalotti polish the brasses of the Bucentoro 
and wait. Brightly shine the overpolished brasses 
of the Bucentoro, but the ships in the Arsenal are in 
bad repair and the crews wanting. 

It is Holy Saturday in Venice, and solemn pro- 
cessions march to the churches. The slow chanting 
of choirs rises above the floating city, but in the 
Citizen Lallemont's apartments is a jangling of 
spurred heels, a clanking of cavalry sabres. General 



198 CAN Grande's castle 

Junot arrived in the small hours of the night. Holy 
Saturday is nothing to a reformed Frenchman ; the 
General's business will not wait, he must see the 
Signory at once. Desert your churches, convene the 
College in haste. A bronze man cannot be opposed 
by a Senate of glass. Is it for fantasy that so many 
people are wearing the tricolore, or is it politeness to 
the visiting general .'* But what does he saj' ? French 
soldiers murdered ! Nonsense, a mere street row 
between Bergamese. But Junot thunders and clanks 
his sabre. A sword is- a terrible thing in a cabinet 
of biscuit figurines. Let that pass. He has gone. 
But Venice is shaken. The stately palaces totter on 
their rotting piles, the campi buzz with voices, the 
Piazza undulates to a gesticulating multitude. Only 
the pigeons wheel unconcernedly about the Cam- 
panile, and the great horses stand, poised and majes- 
tic, beneath the mounting angels of Saint Mark's 
Church. 



CAN Grande's castle 199 

Ascension Day draws nearer. The brasses of the 
Bucentoro shine like gold. Surely the Doge will not 
desert his bride ; or has the jilt tired of her long 
subjection? False water, upon your breast rock 
many navies, how should you remain true to a ship 
which fears to wet its keel. The Bucentoro glitters in 
the Arsenal, she blazes with glass and gilding drawn 
up safely on a runway of dry planks, while over the 
sea, beyond the Lido, rises the spark of sails. The 
vessel is hull down, but the tiers of canvas lift up, 
one after the other : skysails, royals, topgallantsails, 
topsails, mainsails, and at last, the woodwork. Then 
gleaming ports, then streaming water flashed from a 
curved bow. A good ship, but she flys the tricolore. 
This is no wedding barge, there is no winged lion on 
that flag. There is no music, no choir singing hymns. 
Men run to and fro in San Nicolo Fort, peering 
through spy-glasses. Ah, she will observe the rules. 



200 CAN Grande's castle 

the skysails come down, then the royals — but why 
in thunder do not the topgallantsails follow? The 
fellow is coming right under the fort. Guns. He 
salutes. Answer from the fort. Citizen Lallemont 
has agreed that no French vessel shall enter the port, 
even the English do not attempt it. But the son of a 
dog comes on. Send out boats, Comandatore Pizza- 
mano. Per Dio, he is passing them ! Touch off 
the cannon as a warning. One shot. Two. Some 
one is on the poop with a speaking-trumpet. "What 
ship is that ? " "Le LibSrateur d' Italic. Le Capitaine 
Laugier. Marine de la Republique Franqaise." "It 
is forbidden to enter the port, Signor Capitano 
Laugier." "We intend to anchor outside." Do you ! 
Then why not clew up those damned topgallantsails. 
My God ! She is past the fort. She has slipped 
through the entrance; she is in the Lagoon. Her 
forefoot cuts the diamond water, she sheers her way 
through the calm colour reflections, her bow points 



CAN Grande's castle 201 

straight at the rose and violet city swimming under 
the light clouds of early afternoon. Shock ! Shiver ! 
Foul of a Venetian galley, by all that's holy. What 
beastly seamanship ! The Venetians will not stand 
it, I tell you. Pop ! Pop ! Those are muskets, 
drop on them with cutlasses, mes enfants. Chop 
into the cursed foreigners. " Non vogliamo forestieri 
qui." Boom ! The cannon of Fort Sant' Andrea. 
Good guns, well pointed, the smoke from them draws 
a shade over the water. Down come the topgallant- 
sails. You have paid a price for your entrance, Cap- 
tain Laugier, but it is not enough. " Viva San 
Marco!" Detestable voices, these Venetians. That 
cry is confusing. Puff ! The smoke goes by. Three 
marines have fallen. The cannon fire at intervals of 
two minutes. Hot work under a burning sky. Hot 
work on a burning deck. The smoothness of the 
water is flecked with bits of wood. A dead body rolls 
overboard, and bobs up and down beside the ships. 



202 CAN Grande's castle 

A sailor slips from a yard, and is spiked on an up- 
turned bayonet. Over the water comes the pealing 
of many bells. Captain Laugier is dead, and the 
city tolls his requiem. Strike your colours, beaten 
Frenchmen. Bronze cannot walk upon the sea. You 
have failed and succeeded, for upon your Cap- 
tain's fallen body the bronze feet have found their 
bridge. Do you rejoice, old Arsenal? A captive 
ship towed up to you again ! Ah, the cannon firing 
has brought the rain. Yes, and thunder too, and in 
the thunder a voice of bronze. The Bucentoro will 
not take the water this year. Cover up the brasses, 
Arsenalotti. Ascension Day is nothing to Venice 



Yesterday this was matter for rejoicing, but to- 
day . . . Get the best rowers, order relays of horses on 
the mainland, post hot foot to the Commissioners at 
Gratz. One ship is nothing, but if they send twenty ! 



CAN Grande's castle 203 

What has the bronze General already said to the 
Commissioners. The Senate wonders, and wears itself 
out in speculation. They will give money, they will 
plunder the pockets of the populace to save Venice. 
Can a child save his toys when manhood is upon him ? 
The century is old, already another lies in its arms. 
Month by month a new moon rises over Venice, 
but century by century ! They cannot see, these 
Senators. They cannot hear the General cutting the 
Commissioners short in a sort of fury. "I wish no 
more Inquisition, no more Senate. I will be an 
Attila for Venice. This government is old ; it must 
fall!" Pretty words from bronze to porcelain. A 
stain on a brave, new gospel. "Save Venice," the 
letter urges, and the Commissioners depart for 
Trieste. But the doors are locked. The General 
blocks his entrances. "I cannot receive you. Gentle- 
men, you and your Senate are disgusting to the 
French blood." A pantomime before a temple, with 



204 CAN Grande's castle 

a priest acting the part of chief comedian. Strange 
burlesque, arabesquing the characters of a creed. 
You think this man is a greedy conqueror. Go 
home, thinking. Your moment flutters off the 
calendar, your world dissolves and another takes its 
place. This is the cock-crow of ghosts. Slowly pass 
up the canal, slowly enter the Ducal Palace. Debate, 
everlastingly debate. And while you quibble the 
communication with the continent is cut. 

He has declared war, the bronze General. What 
can be done ? The little glass figures crack under the 
strain. Condulmer will not fight. Pesaro flees to 
Austria. So the measure awaits a vote. A grave 
Senate consulting a ballot-box as to whether it shall 
cut its throat. This is not suicide, but murder ; this 
is not murder, but the turned leaf of an almanac. 
"Divide! Divide!" Wlmt is the writing on the 
other side.'* "Viva la Libertd," shouts General 
Salimbeni from a window. Stupid crowd, it will 



CAN Grande's castle 205 

not give a cheer. It is queer what an unconscionable 
objection people have to dying. " Viva San Marco 1 " 
shouts General Salimbeni. Ah, now you hear ! Such 
a racket, and the old lion flag hoisted everywhere. 
But that was a rash thing to do. It brings the crash. 
They fight, fight for old Saint Mark, they smash, 
burn, demolish. Who wore the tricolore? Plunder 
their houses. No you don't, no selling us to for- 
eigners. They cannot read, the people, they do not 
see that the print has changed. By dint of cannon 
you can stop them. Stop them suddenly like a 
clock dropped from a wall. 

Venice I Venice ! The star-wakes gleam and 
shatter in your still canals, and the great horses 
pace forward, vigorous, unconcerned, beautiful, 
treading your grief as they tread the passing 
winds. 



206 CAN Grande's castle 

The riot is over, but another may break out. A 
dead republic cannot control its citizens. General 
Baraguey d'Hilliers is at Mestre. His dragoons will 
keep order. Shame, nobles and abdicated Senate ! 
But can one blame the inactivity of the dead ? 
French dragoons in little boats. The 5th and 63rd 
of the line proceeding to Venice in forty little boats. 
Grenadiers embarked for a funeral. Soldiers crack- 
ing jokes, and steady oar-strokes, warping them 
over the water toward Venice. A dark city, scarcely 
a lamp is lit. A match-spark slits the darkness, a 
drummer is lighting his pipe. Ah, there are walls 
ahead. The dull bones of the dead. Water swashes 
against marble. They are in the canal, their voices 
echo from doors and porches. Forty boats, and the 
bobble of them washes the water step and step above 
its usual height on the stairways. "C'est une Sgli^e 
ga!" "il/aiA", oiii, Betard, tu pensais pourtant 



li 



CAN Grande's castle 207 

pas que tu entrais en France. Nous sommes dans 
une salle ville aristocratique, et je men fiche, moil" 
Brave brigadier, spit into the canal, what else can a 
man of the new order do to show his enlightenment. 
Two regiments of seasoned soldiers, two regiments of 
free citizens, forty boat-loads of thinking men to 
goad a moribund nation into the millennium. The 
new century arriving with a flower in its button-hole, 
the carmagnole ousting the furlana. Perhaps — per- 
haps — but years pile up and then collapse. Will gaps 
start between one and another? Settle your gun- 
straps, 63rd of the line, we land here by the dim 
shine of a lantern held by a bombardier. Tier and 
tier the soldiers march through Venice. Their steps 
racket like the mallets of marble-cutters in the 
narrow calli, and the sound of them over bridges is 
the drum-beating of hard rain. 

There are soldiers everywhere, Venice is stuffed 
with soldiers. They are at the Arsenal, on the 



208 CAN Grande's castle 

Rialto, at San Stefano, and four hundred stack 
muskets, and hang their bearskins on the top of 
them, in the middle of the Piazza. 

Golden horses, the sound of violins is hushed, the 
pigeons who brush past you in the red and rising 
sunlight have just been perching on crossed bayonets. 
Set your faces to this army, advance toward them, 
paw the air over their heads. They do not observe 
you — yet. You are confounded with jewels, and 
leaves, and statues. You are a part of the great 
church, even though you stand poised to leave it, 
and already a sergeant has seen you. " Tiens," says 
he, "voild les quatre chevaux d'or. Ah, mats Us sont 
magnifique! Et quel drdle d'idSe de les avoir monte 
sur la CathSdral." 

The century wanes, the moon-century is gnawed 
and eaten, but the feet of the great horses stand upon 
its fragments, full-tilted to an arrested advance, and 



f, 



CAN Grande's castle 209 

the green corroding on their sides is hidden in the 
glare of gold. 

"For the honour and independence of the infant 
Cisalpine Republic, the affectionate and loving Re- 
public of France orders and commands — " 

What does she command? Precisely, that the 
new Government shall walk in solemn procession 
round the Piazza, and that a mass of thanksgiving 
shall be celebrated in Saint Mark's Church and the 
image of the Virgin exposed to the rejoicing congre- 
gation. Who would have supposed that Venetians 
could be so dumb. The acclamations seem mostly in 
the French tongue. Never mind, it takes more than 
a day to translate a creed into a new language. 
Liberty is a great prize, good Venetians, although it 
must be admitted that she appears in disguise for 
the moment. She wears a mask, that is all, and you 
should be accustomed to masks. The soldiers bask 



210 CAN Grande's castle 

in the warm sunshine, and doubtless the inhabitants 
bask in the sight of the soldiers, but they conceal 
their satisfaction very adroitly. Still, General Bara- 
guey d'Hilliers has no doubt that it is there. This 
liberation of a free people is a famous exploit. He is 
a bit nettled at their apathy, for he has always heard 
that they were of a gay temperament. " Sacre 
Bleu! And we are giving them so much!" 

Indeed, this giving is done with a magnificent 
generosity. It is exactly on Ascension Day that 
Bonaparte wTites from Montebello : "Conformably 
to your desire, Citizens, I have ordered the muni- 
cipalities of Padua and Treviso to allow the passage 
of the foodstuffs necessary to the provisionment of 
the town of Venice." 

"Real and perpetual dominion," and now a boat- 
load of food is a condescension ! Pink and purple 
water, your little ripples jest at these emblazoned 
palaces, your waves chuckle down the long Rivas, 



CAN gbande's castle 211 

you reflect the new flag of Venice which even the 
Dey of Algiers refuses to respect, and patter your 
light heels upon it as on a dancing-floor. There will 
be no more use for the Bucentoro, of course. So rip 
off the gilding, pack up the mirrors, chop the timbers 
into firewood. This is good work for soldiers with 
nothing to do. There are other ships to be dis- 
mantled too, and some few seaworthy enough to send 
to the army at Corfu. But if they have taken away 
Ascension Day, the French will give Venice a new 
fete. Ah ! and one so beautiful ! Beat the drums, 
ring the church-bells, set up a Tree of Liberty in the 
Great Square, this fete is past telling. So wTites the 
Citizen Arnault, from his room in the Queen of Eng- 
land inn. He bites his pen, he looks out on the 
little canal with its narrow bridge, he fusses with his 
watch-chain. It is not easy to write to the bronze 
General. He dips in the ink and starts again. "The 
people take no active part in what goes on here. 



212 CAN Grande's castle 

They have seen the lions fall without making any 
sign of joy." That certainly is queer. Perhaps 
Citizen Arnault did not hear that gondolier, who, 
when they chiselled out ''Pax tibi, Marce, evange- 
lista mens'" on the lion's book, and chiselled in 
" Diritti dell' uomo e del cittadino," exclaimed; "The 
lion has turned over a new leaf." Does that sound 
like grief.'' Certainly not, think the French soldiers, 
and yet the Doge's robes, the Golden Book, burn in 
silence, until a corporal strikes up the "Marseillaise." 
They make a grand blaze too ; why, the boatmen far 
off in the hazy Lagoon can hear the crackle of it 
snapping over the water. Then the columns ! The 
columns produce a lovely effect, one all wound with 
tricolore flags and with this inscription: "To the 
French, regenerators of Italy, Venice grateful," on 
its front, and on the back, "Bonaparte." The other 
is not so gay, but most proper and desirable. It is 
hung with crepe, and the letters read : "To the shade 



CAN Grande's castle 213 

of the victim of oligarchy, Venice sorrowful," and, 
"Laugier." To be sure there has been considerable 
excitement, and the great green lion has been thrown 
down and shattered in at least eighty fragments, but 
the soldiers did it. The populace were simply stolid 
and staring. Citizen Arnault fidgets in his chair. 
But other affairs march better. He has found the 
only copy of Anacharsis which is known to be in 
Venice ; he is going to hunt for Homer, for he wants 
to put it with the Ossian of Cesarotti which he has 
already taken from the Library. Here his pen runs 
rapidly, he has an inspiration. "There are four su- 
perb horses which the Venetians took when, in com- 
pany with the French, they sacked Constantinople. 
These horses are placed over the portal of the 
Ducal Church. Have not the French some right to 
claim them, or at least to accept them of Venetian 
gratitude?" The bronze General has an eye to a 
man, witness this really excellent plan. Fold your 



214 CAN Grande's castle 

letter, Citizen. Press your fob down upon the seal. 
You may feel proud as you ring for candles, no one 
will have hurt Venice more than you. 

The blue night softens the broken top of the 
column in the Piazzetta where it juts against the 
sky. The violet night sifts shadows over the white, 
mounting angels of Saint Mark's Church; it throws 
an aureole of lilac over the star of Christ and melts 
it into the glimmering dome behind. But upon the 
horses it clashes with the glitter of steel. Blue 
striking gold, and together producing a white-heart 
fire. Cold, as in great fire, hard as in new-kindled 
fire, outlined as behind a flame which folds back 
upon itself in lack of fuel, the great horses stand. 
They strain forward, they recoil even when start- 
ing, they raise one foot and hold it lifted, and 
all about them the stones of the jewelled church 
writhe, and convolute, and glisten, and dash the 



CAN Grande's castle 215 

foam of their tendrils against the clear curve of the 
moulded flanks. 

The Treaty of Campo Formio ! A mask stripped 
off a Carnival figure, and behold, the sneering face 
of death ! What of the creed the French were bring- 
ing the Venetians ! Was it greed after all, or has a 
seed been sown ? If so, the flowering will be long 
delayed. The French are leaving us, and almost we 
wish they would remain. For Austria ! What does 
it matter that the Bucentoro is broken up ; the lions 
from the Piraeus loaded into a vessel ; books, parch- 
ments, pictures, packed in travelling cases ! What 
does anything matter ! A gondolier snaps his fingers : 
"Francese non tutti ladri, ma Buona-parte!'^ Hush, 
my friend, that is a dangerous remark, for Madame 
Bonaparte has descended upon Venice in a whirlwind 
of laughter, might have made friends had she not been 
received in an overturned storehouse. But she stays 



216 CAN Grande's castle 

only three days, and the song of the gondoliers who 
row her away can scarcely be heard for the hammer- 
ing they make, putting up an immense scaflfold- 
ing in front of Saint Mark's Church. They have 
erected poles too, and tackle. It is an awful 
nuisance, for soldiers are not skilled in carpenter 
work, and no Venetian will lend a hand. A 
grand ship sails for Toulon as soon as the horses 
are on board. 

Golden horses, at last you leave your pedestals, 
you swing in the blue-and-silver air, you paw the 
reflections flung by rippled water, and the starved 
pigeons whirl about you chattering. One — one — 
one — one ! The tackle creaks, the little squeaks of 
the pigeons are sharp and pitiful. A gash in the 
front of the great Church. A blank window framing 
nothing. The leaves of the sculptures curl, the 
swirling angels mount steadily, the star of Christ is 
the pointed jet of a flame, but the horses drop — 



CAN Grande's castle 217 

drop — They descend slowly, they jerk, and stop, 
and start again, and one — one — one — one — they 
touch the pavement. Women throw shawls over 
their heads and weep ; men pull off their caps and 
mutter prayers and imprecations. Then silently they 
form into a procession and march after the hand-carts, 
down to the quay, down to the waiting vessel. Slow 
feet following to a grave. Here is a sign, but hardly 
of joy. This is a march of mourning. Depart, vessel, 
draw out over the bright Lagoon, grow faint, vague, 
blur and disappear. The murder is accomplished. 
To-morrow come the Austrians. 

Bonfires Burn Purple 
Then the energy which peoples the Earth crystallized 
into a single man. And this man was Water, and 
Fire, and Flesh. His core had the strength of metal, 
and the hardness of metal was in his actions, and upon 
him the sun struck as upon polished metal. So he 



218 CAN Grande's castle 

went to and fro among the nations, gleaming as unth 
jewels. Of himself were the monuments he erected, and 
his laws were engraved tablets of fairest bronze. But 
there grew a great terror among the lesser peoples of the 
Earth, and they ran hither and yon like the ants, they 
swarmed like beetles, and they saw themselves impotent, 
merely making tracks in sand. Now as speed is heat, 
so did this man soften ivith the haste of his going. For 
Fire is supreme even over metal, and the Fire in him 
overcame the strong metal, so that his limhs failed, and 
his brain was hot and molten. Then was he consumed, 
but those of his monuments which harboured not Fire, 
and were without spirit, and cold, these endured. In 
the midst of leaping flame, they kept their semblances, 
and turning many colours in heat, still they cooled as 
the Fire cooled. For metal is unassailable from with- 
out, only a spark in the mid-most circle can force a 
double action which pours it into Water, and volatilizes 
it into Air, and sifts it to ashes which are Earth. For 



CAN Grande's castle 219 

man can fashion effigies, but the spark of Life he can 
neither infuse nor control. 

As a sharp sun this man passed across his century, 
and of the cenotaphs of his burning, some remain as a 
shadow of splendour in the streets of his city, but others 
have returned whence he gathered them, for the years 
of these are many and the touch of kings upon them is 
as the dropping of particles of dust. 

Venice Again 

Sunday evening. May 23, 1915, A beautiful 
Sunday evening with the Lagoon just going purple, 
and the angel on the tip of the new Campanile dis- 
solved to a spurt of crocus-coloured flame. Up into 
the plum-green sky mount the angels of the Basilica 
of Saint Mark, their wings, curved up and feathered 
to the fragility of a blowing leaf, making incisive 
stabs of whiteness against the sky. 

An organ moans in the great nave, and the high 



220 CAN Grande's castle 

voices of choristers float out through the open door 
and surge down the long Piazza. The chugging of a 
motor-boat breaks into the chant, swirls it, churns 
upon it, and fades to a distant pulsing down the Grand 
Canal. The Campanile angel goes suddenly crimson, 
pales to rose, dies out in lilac, and remains dark, 
almost invisible, until the starting of stars behind it 
gives it a new solidity in hiding them. 

In the warm twilight, the little white tables of the 
Cafe Florian are like petals dropped from the rose of 
the moon. For a moment they are weird and magical, 
but the abrupt glare of electric lights touches them 
back into mere tables : mere tables, flecked with 
coffee-cups and liqueur-glasses ; mere tables, crump- 
ling the lower halves of newspapers with their hard 
edges; mere tables, where gesticulating arms rest 
their elbows, and ice-cream plates nearly meet disas- 
ter in the excitement of a heated discussion. Venice 
discusses. What will the Government do ? Austria 



CAN Grande's castle 221 

has asked that her troops might cross over Italian 
territory. South of Switzerland, in order to attack 
the French frontier. Austria! "I tell you, Luigi, 
that alliance the Government made with the Central 
Powers was a ghastly blimder. You could never 
have got Italians to fight on the side of Austrians. 
Blood is thicker than ink, fortunately. But we are 
ready, thanks to Commandante Cadorna. It was a 
foregone conclusion, ever since we refused passage 
to their troops." "I saw Signer Colsanto, yesterday. 
He told me that the order had come from the General 
Board of Antiquities and Fine Arts to remove every- 
thing possible to Rome, and protect what can't be 
moved. He begins the work to-morrow." "He 
does ! Well, that tells us. Here, Boy, Boy, give 
me a paper. Listen to that roar ! There you are, 
cinque centissimi. Well, we're off, Luigi. It's de- 
clared. Italy at war with Austria again. Thank 
God, we've wiped off the stain of that abominable 



222 CAN gkande's castle 

treaty." With heads bared, the crowd stands, and 
shouts, and cheers, and the pigeons fleer away in 
frightened circles to the sculptured porticoes of the 
Basilica. The crowd bursts into a sweeping song. A 
great patriotic chorus. It echoes from side to side of 
the Piazza, it runs down the colonnades of the Pro- 
curatie like a splashing tide, it dashes upon the arched 
portals of Saint Mark's and flicks upward in jets of 
broken music. Wild, shooting, rolling music; vi- 
brant, solemn, dedicated music ; throbbing music 
flung out of loud-pounding hearts. The Piazza holds 
the sound of it and lifts it up as one raises an offer- 
ing before an altar. Higher — higher — the song is 
lifted, it engulfs the four golden horses over the 
centre door of the church. The horses are as brazen 
cymbals crashing back the great song in a cadence of 
struck metal, the carven capitals are fluted reeds to 
this mighty anthem, the architraves bandy it to and 
fro in revolving canons of harmony. Up, up, spires 



CAN Grande's castle 223 

the song, and the mounting angels call it to one an- 
other in an ascending scale even to the star of fire 
on the topmost pinnacle which is the Christ, even 
into the distant sky where it curves up and over 
falling down to the four horizons, to the highest 
point of the aconite-blue sky, the sky of the King- 
dom of Italy. 

Garibaldi's Hymn ! For war is declared and Italy 
has joined the Allies ! 

Soft night falling upon Venice. Summer night 
over the moon-city, the flower-city. Fiore di Mare! 
Garden of lights in the midst of dark waters, your 
star-blossoms will be quenched, the strings of your 
guitars will snap and slacken. Nights, you will gird 
on strange armour, and grow loud and strident. But 
now — The gilded horses shimmer above the portico 
of Saint Mark's ! How still they are, and powerful. 
Pride, motion, activity set in a frozen patience. 



224 CAN Grande's castle 

Suddenly — Boom ! A signal gun. Then imme- 
diately the shrill shriek of a steam whistle, and an- 
other, and whistles and whistles, from factories and 
boats, yawling, snarling, mewling, screeching, a 
cracked cacophony of horror. 

Minutes — one — two — three — and the batteries 
of the Aerial-Guard Station begin to fire. Shells — 
red and black, white and grey — bellow, snap, and 
crash into the blue-black sky. A whirr — the 
Italian planes are rising. Their white centre lights 
throw a halo about them, and, tip and tip, a red 
light and a green, spark out to a great spread, closing 
together as the planes gain in altitude. Up they go, 
the red, white, and green circles vmderneath their 
wings and on either side of the fan-tails bright in the 
glow of the white centre light. Up, up, slanting in 
mounting circles. "Holy Mother of God ! What is 
it?" Taubes over the city, flying at a great height, 



CAN Grande's castle 225 

flying in a wedge like a flight of wild geese. Boom ! 
The anti-aircraft guns are flinging up strings of 
luminous balls. Range 10,000 feet, try 10,500. Loud 
detonations, echoing far over the Lagoon. The nav- 
igation lights of the Italian planes are a faint triangle 
of bright dots. They climb in deliberate spirals, 
up and up, up and up. They seem to hang. They 
hover without direction. Ah, there are the Taubes, 
specks dotting the beam of a search-light. One of 
them is banking. Two Italian machines dart up 
over him. He spias, round — round — top-whirling, 
sleeping in speed, to us below he seems stationary. 
Pup-pup-pup-pup-pup — machine-guns, clicking like 
distant typewriters, firing with indescribable rapidity. 
The Italian planes drop signal balloons, they hang in 
the air like suspended sky-rockets, they float down, 
amber balls, steadily burning. The ground guns an- 
swer, and white buds of smoke appear in the sky. 
They seem to blossom out of darkness, silver roses 



226 CAN Grande's castle 

beyond the silver shaft of the search-light. The air 
is broken with noise : thunder-drumming of cannon, 
sharp pocking of machine-guns, snap and crack of 
rifles. Above, the specks loop, and glide, and zig- 
zag. The spinning Taube nose-dives, recovers, and 
zums upward, topping its adversary. Another Taube 
swoops in over a Nieuport and wags its tail, spraying 
lead bullets into the Italian in a wide, wing-and- 
wing arc. The sky is bitten red with stinging shrap- 
nel. Two machines charge head on, the Taube 
swerves and rams the right wing of the Nieuport. 
Flame ! Flame leaping and dropping. A smear 
from zenith to — following it, the eye hits the 
shadow of a roof. Blackness. One poor devil gone, 
and the attacking plane is still airworthy though 
damaged. It wobbles out of the search-light and 
disappears, rocking. Two Taubes shake themselves 
free of the tangle, they glide down — down — all 
round them are ribbons of "flaming onions," they 



CAN Grande's castle 227 

avoid them and pass on down, close over the city, 
unscathed, so close you can see the black crosses on 
their wings with a glass. Rifles crack at them from 
roofs. Pooh ! You might as well try to stop them 
with pea-shooters. They curve, turn, and hang up- 
wind. Small shells beat about them with a report 
like twanged harp-strings. "Klar zum Werfen?" 
" Jawohl." " Gut dock, werfen." Words cannot carry 
down thousands of feet, but the ominous hovering is 
a sort of speech. People wring their hands and clutch 
their throats, some cover their ears. Z-z-z-z-z ! 
That whine would pierce any covering. The bomb 
has passed below the roofs. Nothing. A pause. 
Then a report, breaking the hearing, leaving only the 
apprehension of a great light and no soimd. They 
have hit us ! Misericordia ! They have hit Venice ! 
One — two — four — ten bombs. People sob and 
pray, the water lashes the Rivas as though there were 
a storm. Another machine falls, shooting down in 



228 CAN GRANDE S CASTLE 

silence. It is not on fire, it merely falls. Then 
slowly the Taubes draw off. The search-light shifts, 
seeking them. The gun-fire is spaced more widely. 
Field-glasses fail to show even a speck. There is 
silence. The silence of a pulse which has stopped. 
But the people walk in the brightness of fire. Fire 
from the Rio della Tanna, from the Rio del Carmine, 
from the quarter of Santa Lucia. Bells peal in a 
fury, fire-boats hurry with forced engines along the 
canals. Water streams jet upon the fire ; and, in the 
golden light, the glittering horses of Saint Mark's 
pace forward, silent, calm, determined in their 
advance, above the portal of the untouched church. 
The night turns grey, and silver, and opens into a 
blue morning. Diamond roses sparkle on the Lagoon, 
but the people passing quickly through the Piazza 
are grim, and workmen sniff the smoky air as they fix 
ladders and arrange tools. Venice has tasted war. 
" Evviva Italia!" 



CAN Grande's castle 229 

City of soft colours, of amber and violet, you are 
turning grey-green, and grey-green are the uniforms 
of the troops who defend you. The Bersaglieri still 
wear their cocks' feathers, but they are green too, 
and black. Black as the guns mounted on pontoons 
among the Lagoons before Venice, green as the 
bundles of reeds camouflaging them from Austrian 
observation balloons. Drag up metre after metre 
of grey-green cloth, stretch it over the five golden 
domes of Saint Mark's Basilica. Hood their splen- 
dour in umbrella bags of cloth, so that not one glint 
shall answer the mocking shimmer of the moon. 
Barrows and barrows of nails for the wooden bastion 
of the Basilica, hods and hods of mortar and narrow 
bricks to cover the old mosaics of the lunettes. 
Cart-loads of tar and planking, and heaps, heaps, 
hills and mountains of sand — the Lido protecting 
Venice, as it has done for hundreds of years. They 



230 CAN Grande's castle 

shovel sand, scoop sand, pour sand, into bags and 
bags and bags. Thousands of bags piled against 
the bases of columns, rising in front of carved cor- 
ners, blotting out altars, throttling the open points 
of arches. Porphyries, malachites, and jades are 
squarely boarded, pulpits and fonts disappear in 
swaddling bands. Why? The battle front is forty 
miles away in Friuli, and Venice is not a fortified 
town. Why ? Answer, Reims ! Bear witness, 
Ypres ! Do they cover Venice without reason ? 
Nietzsche was a German, still I believe they read him 
in Vienna. Blood and Iron ! And is there not also 
Blood and Stone, Blood and Bronze, Blood and 
Canvas? "Kultur," Venetians, in the Rio del Car- 
mine ; there is no time to lose. Take down the great 
ceiling pictures in the Ducal Palace and wrap them on 
cylinders. Build a high trestle, and fashion little 
go-carts which draw with string. 

Hush ! They are coming — the four beautiful 



CAN Grande's castle 231 

horses. They rise in a whirl of disturbed pigeons. 
They float and descend. The people watch in si- 
lence as, one after another, they reach the ground. 
Across the tiles they step at last, each pulled in 
a go-cart; merry-go-round horses, detached and 
solitary, one foot raised, tramp over chequered 
stones, over chequered centuries. The merry-go- 
round of years has brought them full circle, for are 
they not returning to Rome .'* 

For how long ? Ask the guns embedded in the snow 
of glaciers; ask the rivers pierced from their beds, 
overflowing marshes and meadows, forming a new 
sea. Seek the answer in the faces of the Grenatieri 
Brigade, dying to a man, but halting the invaders. 
Demand it of the women and children fleeing the 
approach of a bitter army. Provoke the reply in 
the dryness of those eyes which gaze upon the wreck 
of Tiepolo's ceiling in the Church of the Scalzi. Yet 
not in Italy alone shall you find it. The ring 



232 CAN Grande's castle 

of searching must be widened, and France, England, 

Japan, and America, caught within its edge. Moons 

and moons, and seas seamed with vessels. Needles 

stitching the cloth of peace to choke the cannon of 

war. 

The boat draws away from the Riva. The great 
bronze horses mingle their outlines with the distant 
mountains. Dim gold, subdued green-gold, flashing 
faintly to the faint, bright peaks above them. 
Granite and metal, earth over water. Down the 
canal, old, beautiful horses, pride of Venice, of 
Constantinople, of Rome. Wars bite you with their 
little flames and pass away, but roses and oleanders 
strew their petals before your going, and you move 
like a constellation in a space of crimson stars. 

So the horses float along the canal, between barred 
and shuttered palaces, splendid against marble walls 
in the fire of the sun. 



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